Make Us Proud
by Lorata
Summary: Growing up in District 2 with the high-ranking Peacekeeper families, Alec joins the Career Program at age seven like his older brother Creed and their friend Selene. Alec struggles to fit the Program mold while Creed and Selene flourish, but that just means he has to try harder. Meanwhile the Mockingjay is coming, and Panem is about to go to war ...
1. Chapter 1

Alec's shirt itches against his neck. It's hot and scratchy and the sun makes the fabric too warm against his skin. He tries to pull at the collar but Mom pushes his hand down and gives him a hard look. It doesn't stop the itching, or the hot hot sun, but Alec knows not to complain. The mountains endure and so should Alec.

The crowd is big, lots of people in nice clothes. Lots of Peacekeepers, like Dad and Uncle Paul, bright white suits that shine bright in the sun. The ground shimmers, the concrete moving like water. But it's not water because people are standing on it and they're not falling down. Everyone looks at the big stage with the people on it, or the big screens next to the stage, but they don't move. Alec frowns and stares at the ripples in the air.

He's supposed to be quiet — Creed is quiet, standing next to Dad, and he's wearing itchy clothes but he's not fussing because he's older and he's Creed and Alec is only Alec — but Alec can't help it. He turns his face close to Mom's ear so he can be quiet and asks, "Why is the ground swimming?"

"Alec!" Mom holds up one finger, one finger for one strike, and it's not even lunchtime yet. "Don't make me tell you again. This is Reaping Day. You know what Reaping Day means."

"Silence," Alec says carefully. It's a hard word, all those s-sounds, and harder because his tongue keeps trying to slip between his teeth but Dad says that's not proper speech.

"And why is that?" Mom prompts him, even though that means more talking and not silence at all.

"Silence means respect," Alec says, and this time Mom nods. She lifts him higher in her arms, and Alec holds onto her neck and presses his mouth shut hard enough that his lips hurt.

Beside them Creed stands still and silent and respectful just like good boys do, and Dad reaches down and lays a hand on the top of his head. Creed straightens his shoulders and lifts his chin, just a little, and Dad smiles. He doesn't smile at Alec very much, but that's because Alec isn't good like Creed. He asks too many questions.

The square gets quieter in a noisy way as more people show up. It's more people than Alec has ever seen together, all standing with their shoulders touching, and none of them are talking but that's why it feels so noisy. All those people, there should be words and laughing but there isn't, and all the words that nobody says fill up the air until Alec wants to hide in Mom's shoulder. He doesn't, though, because Creed isn't hiding and Alec wants to be like Creed.

Alec spots Uncle Paul and Aunt Julia across the way, with Selene standing in between them. Aunt Julia holds her hand even though Selene keeps squirming and wriggling her arm, and she has a big scowly face on like when she broke the cookie jar. But then Uncle Paul looks down, and he gives Selene a look that's a frown in the eyebrows but a tiny twitching smile at the mouth. She stops still and turns on the big eyes and sweet smile that she saves for grownups, and Uncle Paul gives her another look that's stern until he winks one eye, just a little. Selene stops wiggling and looks back at the stage, actually behaving now.

Alec is glad Selene is over there. If she were here she'd probably say something really funny really quiet and make Alec laugh and then Dad would make his disappointed face.

After a while a man walks up onto the stage who makes Alec's eyes go big like dinner plates. He looks like a bird, not a real bird but one of the pretend ones in Alec's colouring books when he uses all the crayons. He's got hair that's green and orange and blue and clothes made out of feathers, and Alec looks at Dad to see what he thinks. Dad doesn't like people who are _ostentatious_. Sure enough Dad's mouth has gone flat and one side of his nose is higher than the other, but he doesn't say anything.

It's not good but Alec stops listening when the man talks. The words are big and fluffy like his hair, and his voice goes all high in places and it hurts Alec's ears. When they get home later Creed will have to repeat the speeches and answer Dad's questions about what happened, but Alec isn't old enough for that yet. It's okay if he doesn't listen. He just has to stay awake and be silent.

* * *

"And then he said 'This is how we remember our past'," Creed says, bouncing in his seat. He hasn't touched his lunch but for once Dad isn't telling him to eat up because there are starving children in Twelve. "'This is how we safeguard our future'."

"Good," Dad says, and he lets Creed take another slice of apple from the plate on the table. "That's very important for you to remember."

It's not Alec's turn to talk but this is boring, and he already finished his lunch and his milk and he wants to get down but he can't until everyone is done. "I liked the shiny part," he bursts out.

Dad looks at him, one eyebrow up because Alec interrupted, but then he just says, "What do you mean, the shiny part?"

"At the end," Alec says, encouraged. "There were boys and there were girls and they stood on the big high thing. And the sun came out and everything was all shiny and gold and everybody looked happy. I liked that part."

Dad actually smiles, and he picks up a big chunk of apple and holds it out to Alec, but not quite far enough for him to reach. "Why do you think they were shiny, Alec?"

Oh. That's a hard question. Alec frowns, chews on his lip until Mom clucks her tongue and taps her mouth to remind him to stop. "They're shiny because they're special," Alec says, but that's obvious. "Because — because —"

The Fifty-Eighth Animal Hunger Games, the man said, and Alec can't count to fifty-eight and he didn't see any animals or anyone who was hungry, but he knows what games are. He knows what you have to do when you play a game. "Because they won!" Alec bursts out, and Dad hands over the piece of apple. "They're shiny because they're the winners."

"Because they're the Victors," Creed corrects him in his 'it's okay because I'm older' voice, and Alec would glare but the apple is crisp and tart and tasty. He shoves more bites in his mouth so he can't stick out his tongue. "People who win the Games aren't just winners, are they Dad, they're _Victors_."

"That's right," Dad says. "You boys behaved very well today. I'm proud of you."

Creed grins and takes a big bite of his potatoes, finally, even though they're probably cold now. Meanwhile it's a good thing Alec is all done eating because Dad being proud makes him swell up inside like a balloon, if balloons were filled with light and bubbles and not just air.

 _Victors_ , Alec reminds himself, putting the word in his head and rolling it around like clay in his hands. He has to remember the word because it's big and heavy and important like Dad's rifle. He has to remember because Dad says one day Creed will stand up on that stage where the tall pretty boy and the tall pretty girl stood today. One day Creed will play the Hunger Games and come home a Victor, shiny and gold like the others.

Alec hopes that when Creed is the Victor he remembers that Alec likes apples, and will bring him home a whole basket full.

* * *

The leaves rustle in the summer breeze. Alec grips the branch with his knees and lets go with his hands, falling backward and upside down as the blood rushes to his head. This way the world is different, strange, blue ground that stretches up into a bright green hat, and the buildings point down from the sky like cave crystals.

He swings, extending his arms as far as they will go and spreading out his fingers, straining until his muscles ache, but he can't reach the ground. He'll probably never get tall enough to reach that far, and probably Creed won't either. It's kind of nice to think about something that even Alec's older brother won't be able to do no matter how good at everything he is.

"What are you doing?"

The voice startles him, but Alec has practice with not jumping when people come up without warning so he doesn't lose his grip and fall. He opens his eyes to see Selene, feet planted firmly in the green sky, staring at him with one eyebrow higher than the other.

"Nothing," Alec says. Selene lives in the big house next door, and her parents and Alec's parents might be friends and they might be almost the same age, but Selene does whatever she wants and she doesn't have a big brother to do it all better first. She wouldn't get it if he tried to explain about wanting to stretch until he reaches the ground so he can pretend he's touched the sky.

"You're weird," Selene says, but she thinks everybody is weird so that's fine. "Where's Creed?"

"He's down at the creek," Alec says. They play all sorts of games there usually, but Creed's seventh birthday is coming and all he wants to do is play tributes all the time. Alec is tired of it but he can never come up with a better game when Creed asks.

Selene crosses her arms, frowning at him. "Come down. It's weird trying to talk to your upside-down face."

Alec considers arguing for a minute, but Selene is bigger and she hits hard and if Alec hits her back then Dad will get him in trouble. He's not allowed to hit girls until he joins the Program, and that's two summers away. In the end it's not worth it to argue with Selene, so he rocks with his knees and pulls himself up until his hands close around the branch, then jumps down.

"I'm bored," Selene says, giving the sort of look that means Alec should know what to do about it. If he doesn't she'll come up with something, and it's always fun and usually scary and half the time they end up in trouble. Or at least Alec does; all Selene has to do is give Uncle Paul big eyes and he laughs and sends her on her way. It must be nice.

Alec doesn't feel like getting into trouble today. His skin itches like he has bugs inside, and that means he might like it a little more than he should and might not be able to say sorry properly. "Let's find Creed," he says instead. "He'll think of something good to play."

Selene nods and falls into step. Dad and Uncle Paul aren't really brothers but they look like they could be, both tall and dark-haired with bright blue eyes, except Uncle Paul is bigger and a little bit softer around the eyes where Dad is lean and looks like a hawk. Creed and Selene look like they could be siblings too, both of them tall and strong with colouring like their fathers. Alec is somewhere in the middle, dark hair like his father but with his mother's eyes, and he bets he'll never be as tall as Creed.

(Mom always says it's not fair to compare because he has to wait until he's Creed's age, but that's impossible because when Alec is a year older so will Creed be. He'll always be behind forever, always be younger than Creed, and there's nothing he can do to catch up. It's not fair.)

"You look moody," Selene says after a while. 'Moody' is her favourite word right now after her mom used it on her when Selene stomped around the house in a sulk. Alec can't even remember what was wrong at the time, but probably someone told her no and meant it for once.

Alec shrugs. "I wish I was turning seven. As soon as Creed is at the Centre he's just going to talk about it all the time."

It's not just Creed, either. Ever since the last Games ended (District 4 won, and Dad said that if Two couldn't win then at least one of the other districts who worked for it was better than nothing) they've been preparing for Creed to enter the Program. He's had a new suit made for him that he'll get to wear for the first time on his visit to the Centre, and there's a big party planned for after he's accepted. All of Dad's Peacekeeper friends are invited, and every time they're out in town Dad mentions that he'll be joining the Program soon and Creed puffs up like a balloon while everyone talks about how handsome he's becoming.

One day Alec will be seven and it will be his turn, except it won't be as impressive because both Creed and Selene will have done it first. That's the problem with being the youngest.

At least this time Selene doesn't disagree. "I asked Daddy if I could watch the Games this year." She kicks at the grass, shoving her hands in her pockets. "He said no. Not until I'm ready."

Dad likes to fling that one around too, and Alec rolls his eyes, safe in the cover of the woods. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know!" Selene spits out in frustration, and she gives Alec a look that's a little less like she thinks he's made of noodles than usual. "It's totally cheating. He won't tell me what 'ready' looks like, just that he'll know what it is. But I'm not allowed to say if I think so."

"Dad always says 'when I'm older'," Alec says, though he sneaks a glance over his shoulder just to make sure Dad isn't there, listening. Complaining about his parents always sends a bit of a thrill down his spine. "But he won't say what that means either."

"That's stupid," Selene says decisively, and Alec lets out a small burst of laughter. He'll never get used to the way Selene talks about grownups like she doesn't care if they hear her. "You're getting older every single second. Next time you should just start counting to five and asking if you're old enough yet."

Alec snorts. "That's not what he meant."

"No, but it will annoy him and maybe he'll say yes just so you'll stop." Selene grins. "It works for me."

They've actually made it most of the way into the woods without Selene making a face at him or calling him boring, and so Alec doesn't point out that things work out for Selene in a way that never would for him. Instead he kicks a stray pebble toward her foot; she kicks it back, and they play an impromptu game of ball with it, racing ahead of each other along the path until they reach the creek.

One of the trees fell across the creek a while ago, and they've used it as a bridge when the water is too high to cross without getting soaked. They find Creed stretched out on his stomach, one hand dangling in the water, and he looks up when he hears them coming and waves.

"Whatcha doing?" Selene asks, dropping down onto the bank and peeling off her shoes and socks.

"Trying to catch fish," Creed says, letting his other hand fall. "When you're in the Hunger Games you have to be able to get food anywhere."

"That's the boring way to do it," Selene pronounces. She has a way of talking that makes it sound like her opinions are carved into the mountains somewhere; when Alec complained about it to Dad one time, Dad just said it was a useful skill and maybe he should try it. "I'd get a big sharp stick and stab them."

Creed grins. "Get a stick and we can see who catches a fish first?"

"You're on!" Selene rolls up her pant legs, heaves herself back to her feet, then races back into the underbrush to find a makeshift spear.

"Which way do you want to try?" Creed asks Alec. "You could probably catch a fish if you wanted. You're pretty good at being patient."

Alec shakes his head. "I'm okay."

The truth is he hates fishing, even when Dad takes them out early in the morning and the sky is a soft pastel grey-blue and the birds chirp and leap from branch to branch and nobody talks or shouts. It was fine until he caught a fish, and it flopped against the ground with its big unblinking eyes and its mouth opening and shutting in panic.

Dad handed him a rock the size of his fist and told him to hit the fish in the head with it, make it quick, only Alec's hand shook and it took three tries and the fish's head was smashed all over the ground and the rock and his fingers by the time he finished. Dad showed them how to hook their fingers in the gills and cut it open with a knife but by then Alec didn't feel like eating anymore and it sat in his stomach, heavy and churning.

(When he told Selene about it later her eyes lit up and she begged to come along next time. She caught a fish the length of her forearm and Dad smiled and ruffled her hair. Meanwhile Alec pretended to attach the hook to his line and slipped it under his seat instead, and they all teased him for catching nothing but he just shrugged and said maybe next time.)

At least here he doesn't have to worry. Even Alec knows you can't hunt fish with spears without being quiet and not moving for a long time, and Selene will get bored way before then. Maybe then they can play something else that's actually fun.

Alec moves a little way down the bank and leaves them to their contest. The other day in school they learned about beavers, how their teeth never stop growing and they always have to keep chewing, and he crouches in the soft mud at the edge of the creek and starts building a makeshift lodge. There's no way he could dam the whole creek, not unless he and Selene and Creed worked together all summer, and that's not exciting enough to keep everyone interested that long. It's fun enough piling up mud and sticks and pretending he's making a house for beavers to live in, and Alec loses himself in building until Creed and Selene give up on catching fish and wander over.

"Let's play tributes," Creed says, using the voice that sounds like he's talking for an invisible audience. "I need to practice for when I join the Program soon."

Selene catches Alec's eye behind Creed's back and rolls her eyes at him, and he grins a little at the rare moment of camaraderie. "Fine, but you don't get to be the leader this time. You got to be leader last time and it's my turn."

"All right," Creed says, waving a hand. "We should find shelter in case the weather turns bad."

"I just said you're not the leader!" Selene shoves him, and Alec laughs when Creed looks sheepish. "Fire first, then shelter."

They play tributes all afternoon, and the game ends when it's time to head in for supper and all three of them are named the Victors because it was too hard to choose just one winner. Selene weaves each of them crowns out of green branches, and they head back through the woods together.

Dad is waiting out on the front porch for them, and Selene runs up to him, fearless as always. "Hi Uncle Joe," she calls out. "Can I stay for supper? We all won the Hunger Games and we need a victory feast."

Dad looks down at her and laughs, straightening her crown as it slipped over one ear. He never smiles like that at Alec; Alec can't ever tell if it's because Selene is a girl or because she's not Dad's responsibility. Uncle Paul and Aunt Julia rarely scold Alec when he's at their house, either. "I think that can be arranged," he says. "All three of you, hm? That seems a little unprecedented."

"We fought very well," Creed adds. "There were mutts and snakes and trees that tried to eat us but we never gave up. The Capitol rewards those who fight with honour."

"That they do," Dad says. "Well, come on in, then, and wash up. The blood of victory is honourable, yes, but maybe not at the dinner table."

Alec's throat tightens the way it always does when Dad talks like that. He doesn't mind blood — Aunt Julia is a doctor at the big District Hospital, and Alec likes to hear stories about the people she's saved — but it sounds different when it's full of big important words like this.

Selene doesn't seem to notice. She lifts her leaf crown from her head and sets it on the railing, giving it a pat like a baby she's tucked in for the night, and she looks up at Dad with her best big-eyed face. "Since we're all special Victors, could we get cookies before dinner?"

If Alec asked for a cookie before dinner Dad would just stare him down until Alec changed his mind, without even having to say a word. With Selene he raises an eyebrow. "You think you deserve pre-dinner cookies, do you?" he says.

'Do you deserve it?' is one of Dad's favourite games. It turns Alec's stomach into jelly and sets his heart thumping, but Selene only grins up at him and plants her hands on her hips. "Yes!" she declares brightly. She says it as though there's no arguing, like Dad asked her if the sun is yellow or the mountains high. "The Victor, bathed in riches, serves as a reminder of the Capitol's generosity and forgiveness." Selene rattles off the words that they've all memorized since they were old enough to understand words, but then she keeps going. "But there are three of us and that's a lot of riches, so I think just cookies would be okay."

Dad lets out a funny-sounding cough. "I see. Creed, what do you think?"

"Cookies are a good reward," Creed says. "We earned it."

Dad nods solemnly, then turns to Alec. "And what do you think, Alec? Do you deserve a snack before dinner?"

 _No_ , Alec thinks immediately. No snacks before dinner is a rule, and all they did was play in the woods and pretend to fight mutts and build shelters. It's just a game, it's not real, and Dad makes the disappointed face at Alec all the time even when he tries for real. But if he says no then that's no for everyone, Alec knows how it works. The game says there are three pretend Victors, and if Alec doesn't deserve it then why should they allow two?

All he has to do is say yes, but Dad's eyes burn into him and he turns smaller and smaller until he's almost surprised he doesn't shrink down into the grass like a bug. His throat sticks and it's just a cookie but it isn't, it's a test. Everything with Dad is a test. Alec swallows, and that's when Selene steps in, rolling her eyes at him. " _Yes_ ," she says for him, giving Alec a shove. "You don't have to be modest when you're a Victor, right Uncle Joe? Everybody knows you're the best."

"True," Dad says, and Alec nearly chokes as he releases the breath he's been holding. "But there is a difference between modesty and humility, Selene. Modesty means pretending you're lower than you are, and you're right that a Victor never has to do that. Humility means knowing your place. You can be the greatest Victor who ever lived but you still have to serve the Capitol."

Alec and Creed hold themselves steady, used to Dad when he talks about important things, but Selene shifts her weight, one foot scuffing against the porch step. Dad looks at her again, then snorts and tousles her hair. "I know, sometimes grownups talk too much," he says. "Go, have your cookies, but remember that even Victors must eat their vegetables."

They head in toward the kitchen, Selene grinning. "I don't know how you talk to him like that," Alec says. His chest still feels too tight, but Dad is amused and Alec can't ever make him laugh but Selene can, and dinner tonight will be happy. "If I tried he'd get so mad."

Selene scoffs as she climbs up onto the counter to get the cookies. "If you're too scared to ask for cookies, I'll get two and give you one," she promises. It's such a Selene thing to say that Alec can't help laughing.

"You do deserve it," Creed says to Alec, so serious. "Dad wouldn't ask you if you didn't."

Alec doesn't answer, and when Selene hands him his cookie he stares at it, turning it over in his hands while the edges crumble into his palms. Selene eyes him. "If you don't want yours, I'll eat it," she says. Alec glares and stuffs the whole cookie into his mouth, and Selene bursts into giggles.

"Race you to the sink!" Creed says, pushing them both out of the way. Selene takes off after him, and Alec swallows, wipes his mouth, and follows.

* * *

The day of Creed's seventh birthday, Dad wakes Alec by rapping on the frame of his bedroom door. "Up," Dad says, and Alec scrambles to sit up and look awake, keeping his hands at his sides even though his eyes itch and beg for rubbing because that will only make them red and watery. "Breakfast, then we're taking Creed over to the Centre to enrol him. Your brother was awake an hour ago."

Alec swallows a yawn so hard his entire jaw trembles, but Dad doesn't say anything. "What about calisthenics?"

Dad waves a hand. "Not this morning. You can do them when you get back, but this is important. I want you downstairs and ready in five minutes."

"Yes sir," Alec says, and after Dad leaves he lets out a jaw-cracking yawn just because he can. Yesterday he and Creed and Selene spent the afternoon out swimming at the pond, and the pink patch of sunburn across his shoulders has started flaking. Alec wastes a good minute picking at the skin and twisting around trying to catch sight of it in the mirror, but finally he gets hold of a good, wide piece and peels it off in one go. It sends a shivery feeling all through him as the dead skin pulls back with a light tearing sound, and Alec holds the piece up to the window and stares at the thin patterns before remembering the time.

The skin goes in the trash can, and hopefully tomorrow it peels more so Alec can sneak into Creed's bed and put another piece on his pillow. Alec pulls on his clothes and splashes cold water over his face and on his hair to make it stop sticking up quite so much, then races downstairs. He's lost track of the minutes, but Dad doesn't look at him or tap his watch and that means Alec made it.

When Creed comes downstairs Alec has to shove half a piece of toast in his mouth to stop the giggles because he's wearing a shirt that buttons up all the way to the neck and the kind of pants that wrinkle if you're not careful. Alec doesn't have any clothes like that, even for important days like the Reaping, and Creed's carefully-blank face says he's not too sure about it either. Alec stops being quite so jealous about the big-boy suit.

"There he is," Dad says proudly, resting a hand on Creed's shoulder, and suddenly the toast gets stuck halfway down to Alec's stomach and pokes him hard. "Now you look like a man. Today is a big day, Creed, I hope you're ready."

"Yes sir," Creed says, standing up tall and holding up his head. After Dad tells him to go eat his breakfast Creed slips his chair across the table from Alec. "The shirt is itchy," he whispers. "I keep thinking I'm choking 'cause it's pushing on my neck."

"You're just feeling the weight of responsibility," Alec whispers back, grinning when Creed sputters into his orange juice. "Get ready, Mr. Centre."

After breakfast they fight for a spot over the sink like it's any normal day, and Alec nearly chokes on his toothbrush when Creed shoves him sideways. He retaliates with a hard push that sends Creed into the wall, knocking his head hard enough to make him wince. Alec leans in to say sorry, panic fluttering in his chest — if he's hurt Creed and he can't do the tests at the Centre then Alec won't be sitting down for a week at least — but then Creed levers himself up and hits Alec with an elbow strike right to the cheek.

"Ow!" Alec bursts out at the same time as Creed, who stares at his elbow in betrayal. Alec spits out the last of his toothpaste and rinses out his mouth, checking his reflection. He'll have a bruise later, but at least it's his face and not Creed's today.

Creed pokes at his arm with a frown, and Alec glares. "Sorry I hurt your elbow with my face when you hit me," Alec says, trying his best to use the voice Dad saves for people who break the law and try to tell the Peacekeepers why they shouldn't get sent to the penal mines.

"It's not my fault your face is made of bones," Creed shoots back. "At the Centre they'll teach me how to do that without hurting myself."

Alec's stomach drops just a bit at the thought of Creed bigger and older and armed with special techniques, but he catches hold of himself and forces the fear away. "You can't use Centre stuff on me before I've been there," he says, and he might not be confident all the time but this, at least, he knows. "That's cheating."

Creed wraps an arm around Alec's neck. "I wouldn't do it anyway. Not until you can fight back properly."

He grins, big and cheeky and absolutely asking Alec to push him down the stairs for revenge, but today they can't. Instead Alec turns his head and licks all the way down Creed's arm, then breaks free and jumps the last of the steps while Creed squawks in outrage.

* * *

The Centre headquarters is big and white and dwarfs everything else around it. Alec has seen pictures in books of buildings in Three that stretch up toward the sky, all tall and skinny and looking like they should fall over, and the Centre isn't like that. It's not that high really, but it stretches out and makes everything else around it _feel_ small.

Dad says that the biggest man in the room isn't about size, it's about presence, and that's how the Centre building feels. Alec stops at the bottom of the steps and stares up, and up, and up, and the sky shines bright and blue behind the white marble and he has to take a second just to breathe.

"This is made from some of the finest stone in the district," Dad says from behind him, not even scolding Alec for wasting time. Then again Creed is right there beside him, craning his neck and gazing at the building in awe. He's already been here once, too, for testing, so Alec feels a bit better. "To find better stone you'd have to go in to the Capitol itself."

Dad lets them stand and gape for another minute, then raps them both on the head and ushers them forward.

Inside Alec and Creed wait on a bench in the lobby while Dad and Mom head into the front office to talk with the people inside. Creed sits up tall and straight, and every now and then he sticks his finger under the collar of his shirt and pulls it away from his neck. "I hate this shirt," he says with feeling. "I hope they don't need me to run or anything in it because I'm going to stop breathing and die."

Alec glances at the door, but Dad is still talking with the man behind the desk and hasn't looked their way. "You know what they say, Creed," Alec says, giving Creed his best impression of Dad's serious stare.

Creed sighs and slouches for a second before correcting his posture. "I know, I know, it builds character."

The grownups talk for at least half a forever, but finally Dad and Mom stand up and walk back out to the lobby with a lady dressed in white. Creed and Alec jump to their feet and stand to attention; Alec stretches himself up as high as he can go, straining his neck and shoulders, except Creed notices and does the same thing. By the time Dad makes it over they're both on their toes with their chins pointed toward the ceiling, and Dad gives them both a look that says to cut it out right now.

The Centre lady doesn't notice, or if she does she doesn't say anything. "Creed?" she says, looking down, and she has the kind of smile that's very white and very shiny and would look good on posters. "We're all set now. Would you like to come see the training room?"

"Yes ma'am!" Creed smiles, big and wide and disarming. No grownup has ever been able to resist that smile, and the lady isn't any different because her face changes, stops looking quite so much like she's doing everything for invisible cameras. Dad lets out a small huff of breath through his nose because Creed has all his teeth showing, including the missing one that makes him look like a baby, but the lady only waves a hand for Creed to start walking with her.

Alec watches them go through the big door at the end of the hall. He presses his hands hard against his sides while jealousy climbs around inside his head, poking for a way out.

Dad looks down, and Alec must not be doing so good at keeping his face calm because Dad drops a hand to his shoulder. "It will be your turn soon enough," he says. "This is what Creed was born to do, Alec. Try to be happy for him."

"I am," Alec says, and he does his best to mean it even though he'll never be as old as Creed or as tall and strong and mature as Creed, and one day Creed will join the Hunger Games and Alec never will. Alec knows more about Creed's destiny than anyone else. "Creed" is not just a name, it's a statement of faith, Dad said once, but when Alec asked what Alec meant it just means 'Alec', and that doesn't mean anything.

Alec twists around in the car, staring at the Centre through the back window until finally Dad turns a corner and the gleaming white building disappears.

* * *

That afternoon Mom drives back to the Centre with Alec to pick up Creed after his testing, and he's talking when he gets in the car and talking all the way through the car ride home and still talking when they get in the house. By the time they're home, where Dad is getting ready for Creed's birthday and Centre party, Alec has spent more time imagining stuffing a pillow in Creed's face than he has the rest of his life.

The Centre is big and shiny and fun and has a gym the size of their school, and there are ropes to climb and balls to throw and a track to run around. They had races and Creed was the fastest; they played dodgeball just like at school only they were allowed to throw the balls as hard as they want and nobody got in trouble for hitting someone in the face, and Creed was team captain and told the other kids what to do and they won the game, of course they did. He only came second in the rock climbing contest but that's because the kid who won lived in the quarries and went rock-climbing up the cliffs every day, and Creed already asked her to show him how to do it next time and soon he'll be better. There were snacks, cake and cookies and fresh fruit for everyone, and it was the best best best thing ever and Creed wants to go back every day forever.

A few of Dad's Peacekeeper friends showed up early to help get ready for the party, but they're all sitting around Creed asking him questions while Mom does all the preparation. "He'll owe me one," Mom says when Alec asks if she's not mad. "Why don't you carry out the plate of crackers, Alec, and maybe they'll feel bad once they realize you're working."

Alec does, but nobody notices, and Mom sighs, rolls her eyes in the direction of the living room, and tells him to go play until it's time to eat.

Alec takes the ball outside and spends time kicking it at the wall of the house, listening to the sharp _ping_ of the rubber bouncing off the limestone and the hollow _thump_ when it hits his foot on the way back. It's boring by himself. Alec has always played with Creed his whole life every day, and now every day Creed will have four hours at the Centre while Alec has to figure out how to play on his own.

He gets bored of the wall and starts using a tree instead, and that's a little better because the bark is uneven and it's harder to predict where the ball is going to bounce on the way out. Alec chases the ball around the yard, and he's breathing a bit faster when Selene pops out and says "Hey," and he nearly jumps.

"Hey," Alec says. He's got the hang of it more now, and he kicks the ball so that it hits the tree and angles toward Selene. "Not going inside?"

"Nope." Selene kicks it back, but it flies wide and they race after it. Selene beats Alec, like she always does, and celebrates by aiming the ball at his head. "It was cool but then he just kept talking. It got boring so I came out here."

Alec catches the ball and throws it hard at Selene's face, and she knocks it out of the way with a grin. "Yeah and everybody in there has been in the Program. They all know that stuff already."

"Yeah," Selene says with feeling. "Like I said, boring. I mean you're boring too, but not the talking kind." Alec scowls at her — just because he doesn't push people out of trees or try to set the grass on fire with Dad's borrowed glasses — but Selene only grins wider. "You know what's not boring? Climbing up onto the roof to see if we can spy on them through the windows."

Alec hesitates, but 'boring' rankles in his head and makes that weird itchy feeling come back. "Okay," he says. "We should go up over the porch. The roof is lower there, and we can climb up on the railing."

"Ha!" Selene claps her hands. "See, you can be fun sometimes."

Mom finds them later, both on the roof with Selene hanging over the side and Alec sitting on her legs to keep her from slipping. "I don't even want to know," Mom says, and Alec freezes but Selene only gives her a jaunty upside-down wave. "Come inside, it's time to eat, and I really don't want to explain to your parents how you fell off our roof and died, Selene."

"I wouldn't die," Selene says cheerfully, and she shimmies her way back up with Alec's help. "Alec's fallen out of a tree higher than that, and he just broke his arm."

Alec makes a face at her feet. Selene likes to tell this story as though Alec decided to fall for fun, when really she shoved him off the branch herself. Alec still remembers the jolt of pain that sucked the air right out of him, and Selene's white, white face as she stood over him demanding to know if he'd died. He never told anyone that Selene pushed him because nobody likes a tattletale, but Aunt Julia guessed anyway. She'd set his arm and fixed it up with a cast and sling and then called Selene in to talk to her in a very serious voice, and after that Selene hadn't played quite so rough for a while.

"I don't want you breaking any arms, either," Mom says dryly. "Now go wash up, people are waiting."

Having Selene there makes dinner a little better. There are too many people for the table, so everyone gets a plate and finds a seat around the house to chat. Creed stays with Dad and Uncle Paul and Dad's other best friends, but Alec and Selene steal a whole tray of snacks and manage to hide with it behind the couch. It's much better than sitting alone, dropping crumbs onto the floor in the hopes someone notices him because even being scolded is better than being ignored, and finally the bad mood takes its claws out of Alec's shoulders and flies away.

That night after lights out, when everyone has gone home and Alec and Creed have finished their nightly calisthenics and gotten ready for bed, Creed slips down from the top bunk and flops down next to Alec. "Hey," he says. "Were you mad at me before?"

Alec frowns in the darkness. He rolls onto his back and stares at the bottom of the mattress above him, lifts his legs until his feet touch the slats and pushes up. "I don't know," he says. Mad is easy, it's a hot ball in his stomach that makes him want to do a bunch of things he shouldn't, and whatever happened to him this afternoon feels a lot more messy.

"You'll be seven soon," Creed says. "Then it will be your turn to go to the Centre and have a big party and it will be great."

Alec isn't so sure. A lot of things are only exciting the first time, and maybe turning seven and joining the Program will be like that. Dad always says that Alec can't just imitate Creed and expect everyone to be proud, he has to try even harder. But seven is a long way away and Mom likes to say that worrying never made tomorrow less terrible, it just makes today terrible, too.

"You probably won't come to my party when I turn seven," Alec says. He's kidding, and he drives his elbow into Creed's side to prove it, but the words come out a little meaner than he meant them to, like biting into a slice of lemon. "You'll have all your Centre friends and you'll be almost nine and seven will be real boring. You'll want to play with your new friends and do nine-year-old things instead."

Creed sits up fast enough he almost hits his head on the bedpost. "That's not true! I'm your brother, I'm not just going to forget you! Why would you say that?"

Answering that would mean words, and right now the words keep tangling in Alec's mind, so instead he shoves Creed off the bed and rolls after him. Creed yelps when he hits the floor, then howls when Alec lands on top of him, and he flips them over and starts a wrestling match. They bang into the bed and the dresser and one of the desks, and Alec still has no words but the gross feelings fade a little and he starts laughing instead. Creed smacks his head hard off the bottom of the bed and spits out a bunch of words that one of Dad's friends said when he accidentally dropped firewood on his foot during a cookout earlier that summer, and then he's laughing too.

"What are you boys doing?" Dad demands from the doorway. They must teach how to move quietly at the Centre or the Peacekeeping Academy because Dad is big but Alec never hears him coming.

Alec freezes for a second, then he and Creed spring apart, breathing hard. Blood trickles down from Creed's nose, shiny and black in the dim light from the hallway, and when Alec pokes the skin under his eye he winces at the twinge of pain. That's both sides of his face now.

"Who started this?" Dad asks.

"I did," Alec says immediately. He's not sure really — he pushed Creed first but it was Creed and the party and the Centre and everything else that made him do it — but it's never good to hesitate. Except that Creed says it at the same time, then makes a gross snorting sound as he tries to hold back his laughter through his bloody nose. Alec presses both hands over his mouth.

Dad shakes his head. "My boys," he says, and he gives Alec the sort of look that says if Creed weren't here he'd be in more trouble. "Wipe those grins off your faces and get to sleep, both of you. Creed has a big day tomorrow. Don't keep him up, Alec."

Alec pushes himself to his feet, wobbling a little. "Yes sir. Sorry."

"I don't want your 'sorry', Alec, I want your obedience, understood?"

Alec's cheek twitches, and he makes himself stand up straight. "Yes sir," he says again, and knows better than to add another 'sorry'. One says you mean it; any more and it's just trying to get out of trouble.

They both climb back into bed, Creed with a wad of tissues held under his nose. "Sorry," he whispers after Dad leaves, his voice thick and gunky from the nosebleed.

"I don't want your 'sorry', Creed, I want your _obedience_ ," Alec hisses in a deep whisper. Creed lets out another bunch of odd, snorting half-giggles, and Alec buries his face in the pillow to stop from laughing out loud.

The giggles fade after a while and Alec rolls over to stare out at the dim shadows of their room. Earlier tonight, once dinner finished and everyone was leaving, Creed stood with Dad at the door and said goodbye to the guests while Alec hung back and helped Mom carry all the dishes into the kitchen. _Look at him,_ Mom said to Alec, letting one hand fall to his shoulder, gripping hard enough it almost hurt. _He looks like Two._

Creed did look like Two, tall and proud in his new clothes. Alec, meanwhile, had grass-stains on his knees from playing with Selene, and later he'd be scolded for ice cream around his mouth and crumbs down the front of his shirt. Whatever he'd looked like, it couldn't have been anything important.

But it's not Creed's fault that he got born first, or that he's taller or stronger or smarter. Alec sighs. "Happy birthday," he says finally, keeping his voice low.

"Thanks," Creed whispers back, then throws the balled up tissues down so they hit Alec in the face. Alec almost climbs up there to start another fight before remembering Dad's warning, so he files it away and makes a note to ask Selene for help plotting revenge later. Above him Creed snickers, and Alec makes a face in the dark.


	2. Chapter 2

The night before Alec's sixth birthday is the longest ever. No one is allowed to join the Program before they're seven, but they can start the entrance process from six, and both Creed and Selene got taken to the Centre on their birthdays to sign the papers and take the tests. Creed wouldn't tell Alec what it was about because he said it's important that Alec do it on his own, and meanwhile Selene made up a whole lot of stupid things like having to be walloped with sticks without crying and running across red-hot bricks until Alec threw a cherry at her head.

Alec rolls around, kicking at the blankets and punching his pillow and bunching up the sheets into a giant ball at the foot of his bed until Creed hisses that if Alec doesn't stop he's going to come down there and _make_ him sleep. Finally Alec gives up, and he slips out of bed and heads for the front door. He tugs on his shoes, opens the door slowly, slowly, slowly so it doesn't creak, then jumps down from the top step onto the ground.

He runs around the house, listening to the insects chirp and watching for blinking fireflies even though they're not close enough to the lake for that. His feet sink in the soft grass, and the breeze wafts warm against his face and the leaves rustle and above him the sky shines a soft orange at the horizon from all the lights in town. Alec runs until his breath catches and his heart pounds in his chest and the worries give way. He finally heads inside when he can't tell whether his lungs or his legs are screaming louder, where he kicks off his shoes and nearly runs right into Dad.

"I couldn't sleep," Alec says.

Dad reaches down, brushes Alec's sweat-soaked hair off his forehead as Alec keeps himself very, very still, even holding his breath as the pressure builds. "Good," Dad says finally. "You should sleep better now."

"Yes sir," Alec says, and he almost skips back to his room.

The next morning Alec makes it out of bed before Creed stirs, and he gets dressed and washes up and slips out to the breakfast table, clean and damp. Mom is awake in the kitchen, and they all wait for breakfast until everyone is up but she does pass Alec a strawberry from the community garden, tart and fresh.

Breakfast is Alec's favourite today, pancakes with real fruit and sprinkled with cinnamon saved from the last Parcel Day package. Dad ruffles Alec's hair, and when Creed comes downstairs he's the last one to the table and has to do pushups before he's allowed to take his place. He even gets an extra ten added to his count because he's in the Program now and should know better, and Alec grins from his spot and wishes he could catch this feeling with a butterfly net and keep it in a jar forever.

"Now," Dad says to Alec after they finish eating, and Alec sits up straight. "You know this is your last pre-Program birthday."

"Yes, sir." Birthdays are milestones, and anyone can get older but not everyone succeeds in the Program, and once you join then that's all that matters. It's not like this for the other kids at school, and Alec is pretty sure that Uncle Paul and Aunt Julia will still give Selene presents when she's seven, eight, nine years old, but he is a Seward, not a Valent or anyone else. Even Creed got the party last year but that was about enrolling, not his birthday, and all his presents were things like training shoes or punching gloves.

"It's not easy being the younger," Dad says, and Alec swallows hard. "But you've always worked very hard, and we're proud of you. I know you're going to keep on working every year."

He slides a box across the table, and Alec picks it up. It's heavy, and when he shakes it something inside rattles. He flips open the lid, fingers fumbling with the ribbon, and sucks in a sharp breath: it's a watch, but not the little plastic ones like some of the kids at school have, bright colours and kiddy patterns. This one is a man's watch made of smooth dark metal, and the face is plain except for the Panem seal at the top and District 2's at the bottom. The band is made with links so it can expand as Alec's wrist gets bigger.

"Thank you sir," Alec says. He knows better than to put it on himself; he holds out his arm, and Dad fastens the watch around his wrist himself. It's heavy, and across the table Creed shifts in jealousy and Alec has to bite his lip to stop his grin from getting too big.

After breakfast Alec heads for the front door, except that Dad doesn't follow or get his keys or anything. "Are you going to play with Selene?" Dad asks.

Alec frowns. "I thought we were going to the Centre. That's what you did when Creed was six."

Dad shakes his head, and wait, what? The happy bubble inside Alec pops and everything goes heavy instead. "Creed is our gift to the Capitol," he says. "You know that. He's the oldest, and we offered him to the Centre freely. It won't be the same with you."

Halfway between the table and the kitchen, Creed stops with his hands full of plates, eyes darting between Dad and Alec. Alec gnaws the inside of his lip until Dad's eyes zero in on his mouth, and then he bites right through by accident before he can stop himself. "I don't understand," Alec says slowly, probing the sore spot with his tongue and tasting blood.

"You're the second son, Alec," Dad says, and suddenly the watch on Alec's wrist feels like it's about to drag his hand down right through the floor. "Do you know what that means?"

"It means I have to work harder," Alec says immediately.

Dad doesn't bother nodding. It's not a question he expected Alec to be confused about. "It does. There are two ways to get into the Program. One, parents bring their children to the Centre and have them tested, like Creed or Selene. Two, someone else sends the child a recommendation."

But what does that _mean_? The question burns inside Alec's brain, but he's not baby enough to ask and he has enough practice keeping things from his face that Dad only raises his eyebrows. "Yes sir," Alec says. Creed still hasn't moved, but his shoulders have come up toward his ears a little. "I'm going to go find Selene."

Dad nods and lets him go, and Alec doesn't bother with his shoes. He takes off as soon as the door shuts behind him and runs straight for the Valents'.

* * *

"That's easy," Selene says when Alec asks her. She spits out the blade of grass she was trying to make into a whistle, glares at it, and plucks another. "I got a recommendation even though Dad took me. You just have to get into a lot of fights."

Alec sighs. "I get in a lot of fights. All the time. With you."

Selene grins, sharp and pleased, as she lifts the new blade to her mouth and blows. The sound that comes out is a sad burst of air, and Selene makes another face. "It's not the same thing," she says. "I mean you need to start them."

Oh. Selene does start a lot of fights, mostly with boys but not always. She's very loud at recess and she always plays rough and gets called aside by the teachers, and one time she threw a ball so hard a boy's glasses broke against his nose and he had to go see a doctor. Alec tries to imagine doing something like that, but his brain just spins like the Capitol logo on the TV screen on days when the storms knock out the signal.

"I don't think I can do that," Alec says finally.

Selene cocks an eyebrow at him. She looks a lot like Aunt Julia when she does that, only that's one of the things that would make her punch him if he said it. Aunt Julia is always telling Selene it's not good to fight. "Then I guess you're not going to get into the Program."

That's just Selene being Selene — she doesn't waste a lot of time rolling around in her brain when there's a clear alternative — but Alec's stomach almost leaps right out through his mouth. "But I have to!"

Selene shrugs. "Then you have to start fights." She blows against her thumbs one more time, and this time she manages a high-pitched screech that saws right through Alec's head. "Ha!" she says, and throws up her arms in triumph.

Except Alec can't stop staring at her right wrist, where soon at the end of the month she'll get the first strand on her Program bracelet. Black for the top third of the class, blue for the middle, and white for the bottom; Creed's first was black and so will his next be, everyone knows it, and if Selene's isn't black too then Alec will eat his shoes.

"Start fights," Alec says, flopping back onto the ground and staring up at the sky.

"It's really not hard," Selene says, patting him on the head while Alec glares at her green-stained fingers. "Just find somebody who has something you want, and take it. They'll do the rest."

* * *

The next day at school, Alec waits for recess before starting with his plan. He's supposed to start fights and get noticed, but that doesn't mean he should do it by shoving people around in class and making trouble with his teachers. Dad wouldn't like that at all, and neither does Uncle Paul; Selene is smart and she does well but she also gives the teachers attitude sometimes, and whenever she gets sent home Uncle Paul always makes his disappointed face and she shrinks at least a foot.

But recess, that's fair game and everyone knows it. Most of the time Alec joins in races or in the big sprawling games that use up half the kids on the playground, because Selene and her friends are a little bit mean and Creed's friends don't like the little brother hanging around. Nobody picks on Alec because of Dad — both because he's important and because he taught Alec to take care of himself — but not all the kids are so lucky.

This is the best school in Two, Dad says, all the best kinds of people, which means the ones with parents who worked to be where they are, not because they had anything handed to them, and that means a lot of kids who are big and pushy and know how to get what they want. Not all of them are happy with what they have, like Creed, and with so many angling to get into the Program, it means a lot of fights.

Alec scouts the playground and finds a group of boys, big ones a few years older, standing in a circle and kicking around a ball. There's a kid in the middle trying to catch it, and while some of them have Centre bracelets around their wrists, a mix of blue and black strands, the one in the centre doesn't. Good enough.

"Hey," Alec calls out. The leader looks over, marks Alec as younger and looks away — then comes back, because Alec knows how to stand to make himself look more confident, feet apart and head up high. "You done with that ball?"

The biggest boy rolls his eyes. "No. Go play on the baby swings."

He goes to turn back, but Alec takes a step forward. "No, I want the ball."

This time his eyes narrow. "Well, you can't have it, because it's ours. Go get your own."

A teacher glances over, curious but not concerned enough to interfere — yet — and Alec fights back the instinct to shrug and walk away. This is important. Dad wants him to fight, the Centre wants him to fight. "You've had your turn," Alec says. It's easy enough to imitate Creed's tone, the one that says _I'm right and you should listen_ , even though it feels weird coming from him. "Let someone else play."

The leader makes a disgusted sound and tosses a ball to one of his friends. He leaves the circle — the kid in the middle slips out through the gap as the other kids break form — and marches up to Alec, puts both hands on his shoulders and shoves, hard. Alec catches his balance with one foot behind him and stays firm. "Last chance, kid. Go away."

Dad has shown Creed and Alec lots of ways to fight, but his favourite are the ones that show you mean it. At the Centre they'll have to learn to fight for show just as much to win because in the Arena it's also important to be exciting, but this isn't the Arena, and nobody is watching except the teachers. Teachers who will break it up as soon as it gets bad, and that means Alec doesn't have time to waste.

A fist to the throat, thrown with intention, will end almost any fight, Dad says, and so Alec does just that.

It's not like hitting Creed in the face or the shoulder when they scuffle, where the knuckles sting almost as much as the person on the other end; the throat is soft and squishy and it feels weird, and the boy drops right away, croaking and gasping for air. Alec ignores him as soon as he hits the grass and goes for the next one, turned half away and gaping in shock at his friend on the ground; Alec plants a firm kick to the back of his knee, just like Dad showed him, and he goes down, hard. One more kick to his side and he won't be getting up.

After that, though, there's all the rest of them. Alec might have practice sparring at home with Dad and Creed and wrestling with Selene, and he might get nosebleeds and black eyes from roughhousing all the time, but that doesn't mean he's good enough to take on a whole bunch of Centre kids at once. The teacher runs over as soon as soon as they turn on him, but Alec ends up in the office with a broken nose and split lip anyway.

He sits on the hard chair by the door, holding a bag full of frozen peas to his face while the secretary calls home. "They're at work," Alec says, and she gives him a flat sort of look and sets the phone down with a minute later. "Dad works at Eagle Pass," he reminds her, just in case she forgot. Dad and Uncle Paul both work in the big compound under the mountain, the centre of all of Two's military. They're not going to take a call from the office just because Alec got in a fight; if it was bad he'd be in the hospital and the hospital could call them.

The blood sticks in his nose and runs down the back of his throat, thick and choking and gross. It's itchy and tickling and Alec really wants to spit but he can't do it on the office floor and there aren't any trash cans close enough. He's pretty sure Ms. Leeson isn't going to let him come behind her desk and hock up a bunch of blood and spit there.

Instead he breathes slowly through his mouth, counting to four each time to try to make his heart stop jumping so hard. It wasn't like sparring with Dad or Creed at all, or even tussling with Selene on the days she actually pushes him far enough. It's not like defending himself either, where everything is forgiven because a man doesn't let other people push him around no matter what. Sure they were bullying that kid in the middle but they weren't hurting him, and Alec could have called a teacher. But no, he walked right up and he threw the first punch and it's not right, not at all.

He can't stop thinking about the time Mom said no cookies before dinner and Selene convinced him to sneak into the kitchen anyway. After dinner Mom gave him two, one for the usual and one because he'd respected her and waited like she asked him to. Selene kicked him under the table until he said thank you and ate them, and they sat in his stomach like rocks long after the bruises on his shin stopped stinging.

But this is what the Program wants, what Dad wants, and Alec trusts Dad and respects the Program, and it can't be wrong if people he respects and trusts tell him to do it. They're important grownups and Alec is just a kid, and it's important to learn to take orders even if he's not sure at first.

Ms. Leeson gives up with the telephone and puts it away, then leans forward with her hands folded on her desk. "What's the matter, Alec? You're usually such a sweet boy. Did something happen?"

Alec is a sweet boy with a face gone purple and swollen, and he drops the bag and lets her see it. The mean expression takes a while to get right but it's not that hard to imitate, and Alec twists his lip just a little bit and stares at her until she blinks and looks down. "Maybe you don't know me," Alec says, then hides behind the peas again so she won't catch how much he's shaking.

In the end, because they can't reach his parents they send him back to class. The other kids gasp when Alec sits down, and he lets everyone get a good long look at his face while he pretends like this is normal and no big deal. Alec isn't quite sure how to act like he gets in fights with big kids all the time but he avoids everyone's gazes and puts his hand up to answer the teacher's next question, and that seems to be good enough.

* * *

That night Dad takes one look at Alec and grins. "Start, or finish?"

Alec fights the impulse to sniffle or touch his tongue to the cut on his lip. "I started it," he says. "The teachers made us stop before we were done fighting." He gives Dad the whole story, and the whole time his chest flutters. What if he did it all wrong somehow? What if it only counts if he's the only one standing when it finishes?

After the story finishes Dad gives him a long, hard look, but then he smiles and claps a hand on Alec's shoulder. "Good," he says. "Next time go for a smaller group and see if you can finish it."

"Yes sir," Alec says, and runs off to wash up for dinner before Dad sees his face fall at the thought of _next time_.

At dinner, Creed talks nonstop about the Centre like he always does. "We climbed the rope today," he says. "The big one, the one that goes all the way to the ceiling. I was the only one who got all the way to the top."

He's listened to these conversations every day since Creed joined the Program, but today Alec can't take it anymore. His face hurts, chewing hurts, and every time he has to close his mouth and breathe through his nose while eating it's hard to take in any air and his head gets dizzy. "I got in a fight today," Alec bursts out. He drops his fork and it clatters against his plate, loud enough that everyone turns to stare. "A big one. I got sent to the office and broke my nose and everything. That's way better than climbing a stupid rope."

Creed gapes at Alec for a second, then flushes. "So what? I got in a fight and broke my arm last week."

Alec narrows his eyes. The fight is still here somewhere, whispering in his ear, and he presses his hands down hard against the edge of the table. "That's not true! You don't have a cast."

"Shows what you know," Creed shoots back. "They have special casts at the Centre, you put them on and your bone gets fixed by the end of the day."

That makes Alec stop, because maybe they do — lots of kids get hurt at the Centre, and they can't all stop activities like that one time Sonja broke her arm and her mom said she couldn't play outside at recess for six weeks — but then Creed's nostrils do the thing where they flare really quick. "You liar!" Alec bursts out. That's Creed's tell, and Dad says he's going to have to learn how to stop doing that if he wants to succeed but he hasn't yet. "The casts don't do that and you didn't break your arm and getting into a fight is way better than climbing a stupid rope _so there_!"

"It is not! Anyone can get in a fight!"

"You're just jealous!"

"Boys," Mom says in a warning tone, and they both snap their mouths shut and look at her. Creed's face has gone red and Alec's breath pushes hard in his chest. "Take it outside."

Alec stands up so fast he bangs his knee on the underside of the table and his chair falls over, and he and Creed tear outside without bothering with shoes while Dad chuckles and reaches for the pitcher of water. They wrestle and fight in the grass, and Creed goes for Alec's nose because he talks about honour but at the end of the day he knows how to win, except Alec is mad mad mad and the fight sparks deep in his stomach and he jams his thumb right into Creed's eye.

"Sometimes I hate you," Alec gasps out. Once he starts the words bubble out of him, and he pushes Creed away and fights for air. "You get everything so easy. I have to try hard all the time!"

"Oh boo hoo for you!" Creed snaps. He doesn't look so perfect now, his hair mussed and the collar of his shirt stretched and grass and twigs stuck all over him. "You don't actually have to try! You don't need to get into the Games. As long as you get into Residential you can quit anytime you want. Nobody cares what you do!"

The anger inside him crumbles and floats away like a big clump of dirt dropped into a puddle. "What?" Alec says, staring.

Creed glares but doesn't try to start up the wrestling match again. He swipes a hand across his eyes, the gesture hard and furious. "I'm Dad and Mom's gift to the Capitol," he says. "They can't send a bad gift, I have to be perfect, all the time. I have to be the best and I have to come first in everything and I have to become a Volunteer or I'm not good enough. It's always all these expectations and it only looks easy because I make it look easy! Because I _have_ to make it look easy!"

Guilt creeps over Alec, and the sour taste in his mouth isn't just because he accidentally swallowed dirt when Creed pushed him face-first into the lawn. "But you are perfect," he says, only his voice comes out smaller than he wanted.

"Yeah," Creed says. He plucks at his shirt, knocking away bits of leaves and grass. "Perfect takes work, Alec. It's not something you are, it's something you — you have to _be_."

Alec moves over to sit next to Creed, knocking their shoulders together. "Sorry," he mumbles.

"Me too." Creed jostles him back. "That's your first fight, right? How many?"

"Five, I think?" Alec prods at his nose. It hurts a little less now. "Maybe six. I forget." Creed grins, and it's easier to feel proud about the numbers than to focus on the weird, sliding feeling from starting the fight in the first place. "Were you really the only one to climb the rope?"

"Yeah." Creed holds out his hands, palms up. Alec hadn't paid attention to them earlier but now Creed peels the layer of synth-skin back. The skin is blistered and torn on the underside of his fingers and the soft, fleshy bit at the top of his palms, and Alec whistles before Creed pushes the beige goo back in place. "Cameron got close, but he gave up near the top. I got a brownie. You have to do real good to get a whole brownie."

"I bet I'll get a brownie," Alec says. Faking confidence still doesn't come easy, but it's getting better, and he has to try less and less to imitate Creed or Selene and just does it.

Creed looks at him, dark eyes solemn. "You will," he says, using the sincere voice that Selene likes to tease him for, and Alec laughs and ducks his head.

When they come back inside, bruised and filthy but laughing, there are warm apple slices sprinkled with cinnamon waiting for each of them at the table.

* * *

It's the middle of February by the time the call from the Centre finally comes, and by then Alec doesn't care about the Program anymore, he's just glad he can stop fighting. He's been scrapping since the summer, pushing around the big kids on the playground and coming home bruised and bloodied, and every month that goes by without a recommendation Alec adds to his secret plan to run away to District 4 and live on the beach forever.

By the time they call Alec can't remember having smooth knuckles, or washing his hands without the soap stinging in the tiny cuts. His stomach starts cramping every night after supper because the wall-sits are coming, and each month that goes by means another thirty seconds added to his total for motivation. Every night Alec thinks he can't, he won't, if he has to sit against the wall for four minutes his legs will fall off and he'll die, but he can and he does. He is a Seward and he is a Two and there are worse things than burning thighs and shaking calves and massaging his legs after lights-out and learning to cry without waking Creed.

But they do call, finally, and Dad is very polite and sharp and military-precise on the phone and that's how Alec knows it's the Centre calling. Creed grins at him over his math homework, and Alec stares for a blank second before remembering to grin back. He'd been trying so hard to get through every single day that he'd forgotten anything further away than that.

He remembers to say 'thank you, sir' when Dad congratulates him on getting noticed, and the good thing about all the exercises and wall-sits is that Alec's brain really wants to stay up all night worrying about the tests but his body says _ha ha no_ and makes him fall asleep.

* * *

Everybody knows there's an exam when you turn thirteen to get into Residential, because the teachers at school stop asking the twelve-year-olds with bracelets on their wrists to do homework or answer questions in class. There's no point when they'll be gone soon anyway, and any time of year there's always one or two around school muttering to themselves and getting their friends to quiz them.

The thing is, nobody practices to get into the Program in the first place, but there are tests. Creed said so, and so did Selene, but both of them say they're not allowed to tell him what happens — even Selene, who usually listens very carefully to what people tell her to do and then does exactly the other thing.

"It's not about the right answer," Mom says as they drive to the Centre recruitment building. "The Centre is looking to see who's the right fit. They don't want people who have practiced what they think the trainers want to hear. They want real candidates, not fakes."

Alec swallows and holds his face very still even though there's ice crawling around where his blood should be, freezing him from the inside out. What if he isn't a real candidate? Alec has been faking it since the day he walked up to that group of boys and demanded the ball; he's not like Creed or Selene or Dad or even Uncle Paul, he's just normal except he knows what they want from him and how to do it.

And now that's not what they want at all.

"Don't worry," Dad says, nice and breezy like Alec's life won't be over if they don't want him. "You'll do fine. They know quality, and Sewards are quality."

"He's only half a Seward," Mom says in a scolding sort of tone, reaching over to pat Dad's leg in a way that looks nice but means 'watch it, mister'. "Half that quality belongs to me."

"Yes, yes, very true," Dad admits with a laugh, and Alec shares a grin with Creed despite his nervousness. It's always fun to see Mom get on Dad's case because she's the only one who can. "Listen to your mother, Alec, that will get you far in life."

When they get there, Dad drops them off at the front while he parks the car. Creed grabs Alec's sleeve and tugs him aside. "It's not really a test," Creed says in a low voice, eyes darting around in case any grownups are listening. "There's no quiz or anything. They just ask you a bunch of questions and they want you to be honest. It's not a big deal, I promise."

Alec frowns, but Creed's nose doesn't do the thing and he has his serious frown on so while he might be wrong, he's at least not lying. That will have to be good enough. "Okay," he says.

Creed falls silent as they all walk into the lobby together, but when Mom and Dad leave them on the bench he leans over again. "They're going to ask you why you want to be here," he whispers, and he grips Alec's arm tight. "They don't care what your reason is, I swear, but it has to be yours. Don't tell them it's because Dad said you have to, okay? That's all I can tell you."

Alec nods, and Creed nods back with a small sigh of relief. When the trainer comes out to take Alec in for testing, he makes sure not to look back.

"I'm sure you're nervous," the trainer says. She's a tall, pretty lady, shiny blonde hair and bright blue eyes that look like they could see right through him. "It's always worse for a younger sibling when the older one has done it before, but don't worry. We're just going to talk for a while, and then we'll take you out and you can show me what you can do."

"Talk about what?" Alec asks without thinking. He snaps his mouth shut but she doesn't scold him for asking questions out of turn, just gives him a small smile.

"You, mostly," she says, and holds open a door to a nice, white room. It's mostly empty but it looks clean, and the walls are white and there's a nice big window overlooking the yard where a lot of kids are playing. Alec relaxes. "So, Alec, what kind of things do you like to do?"

Creed was right — it's not like a test at all. She asks Alec about school, about his classmates and his friends, about what he and Selene and Creed play when they all hang out together. She asks about his teachers and if he ever breaks the rules and what he thinks about authority. Alec answers, the lady writes things down, and Alec's shoulders finally stop hunching quite so hard — at least until she asks what she thinks about his parents.

"Pardon?" Alec asks, carefully. "I don't understand the question." Parents are parents; you don't _think_ about them, you just _have_ them.

The lady tilts her head, and she gives Alec the sort of narrow-eyed thoughtful look that Aunt Julia uses to tell them she'll know if they lie. "What do you think of your parents? Or just — tell me about them," she says finally, when Alec keeps staring.

That, at least, is easier. "My parents were Peacekeepers," Alec says. "They both stayed in the Program until sixteen. My dad finished his twenty and moved to a job at Eagle Pass command. My mom is a teacher now, at the Peacekeeping Academy." Here he falters, because the lady is smiling but it doesn't feel like the one when he gives the right answer.

"Do you ever get angry with your parents?" she asks, when Alec doesn't try to keep going.

Alec freezes, inside and out. "What?" he asks, and he didn't say 'pardon' like he's supposed to (or even 'excuse me' which Dad says is for when people ask rude questions) but it's too late now.

"Do your parents ever make you mad?" she asks. Alec still doesn't answer, and he's looking toward the door and trying to figure out if he could run without being caught when she lets out a bunch of air through her nose. "This is confidential, Alec. That means I'm not going to tell them. I want you to be honest."

Alec presses his hands flat against his sides. He's supposed to respect his parents but he's also supposed to respect authority and nobody told him what to do if those two things go against each other. "Yes," he says finally. He tries to speak with confidence like the Centre wants but all he gets is a scratchy whisper. "Sometimes."

"Why is that?"

"They like my brother better." He shouldn't say this, this is baby talk, but she asked and Alec has to answer because those are the rules, and Dad says you can't just follow the rules when you feel like it. "It makes me and Creed fight a lot because I get mad."

"Do your parents get angry when you fight?"

This time Alec stops, not because he's scared, but because he has to think about it. "Not unless we're disruptive," he says finally, though even at his worst Alec couldn't be more disruptive than Selene. "But Dad says competition is healthy and we have to get used to it."

The lady nods, and taps her pen against the clipboard. "You talk a lot about what your Dad. It sounds like you respect him a lot."

"Yes," Alec says immediately, glad for an easy answer.

"Are you afraid of him?"

"You can't respect authority if you don't fear it," Alec says immediately, proud that he got one right for once. It's true about Dad, about the president, about the Capitol, everything. He can't hear footsteps come up behind him without tensing, but that just means he must have been thinking about doing something wrong or he wouldn't have been afraid. "Fear is another word for respect for people who don't understand." But then the woman's lips tighten and she makes a note on her paper and Alec can't help a small gasp. Of course; he said the line like he'd heard it which meant it sounded practiced which is exactly what Mom told him not to do. He scrambles to try again. "I just meant — I respect my parents. Even when I get mad."

"All right," she says. "One last question, Alec. You said your parents were in the Program, and we have records that show your brother is here, too. Why do you want to be here?"

And there it is, the question Creed warned him about, though the warning didn't actually help Alec come up with a good answer. He bites the inside of his lip again, curling his toes inside his shoes. When the answer finally comes Alec almost doesn't say it — it doesn't sound grand like when Dad talks, or sincere like Creed or even gleefully honest like Selene when talking about fighting and growing up to be a Peacekeeper like Uncle Paul — but they want honest.

"Creed is always better than me," Alec says. "He'll always be better than me. He's the oldest and he's Dad and Mom's gift to the Capitol and he's perfect. He'll always be older and bigger and stronger and faster and I hate it. I don't like being second. I want — I want to see what I can do if I don't always have to lose to him."

After that the questions finish, and the lady puts her clipboard away. "One more thing, and then we'll go outside," she says, and she takes a bag from the cupboard behind her and pulls out one marshmallow. She sets it on a plate in front of Alec, who tilts his head. Selene did mention getting a marshmallow, but she also said she got a cookie and an apple and a brownie. Alec thought she'd just been bragging.

The lady tells Alec she has to go take care of something, and he can have the marshmallow to eat while she's gone. "Or," she says, "If you wait, I'll give you two when I get back. It's up to you."

"Okay," Alec says, frowning after she leaves him alone. Waiting isn't a big deal, Alec waits all the time, and Dad says patience is important so he and Creed have to practice. Here he even gets a chair to sit on, not like when he has to sit with his back against the wall and his knees bent, so really, it's not hard. He doesn't like raw marshmallows anyway, really, they're chalky and they coat his tongue and make his mouth taste funny. He likes them best when they're toasted over the campfire, and he'll never admit it to Selene because she'd cackle until forever but they taste best when she makes them, burnt black with the middle bubbling out.

Even if Alec really did like marshmallows, all he has to do is pretend that Dad is here, watching, and no way will he be able to eat it. It's a test the way everything is a test but isn't, where there are no wrong answers except there are because that's life. But Mom said not to think too hard and to be honest, and if the lady didn't give him any hints about which way he should go then maybe there really isn't one.

Creed probably stuffed the marshmallow in his face as soon as the door closed. What would he care about getting two treats later? He'd only get more when they saw how fast he ran or how high up the ropes course he climbed. Creed is the special brother, he's the one who does everything right and gets whatever he wants, and Dad says that means if Creed gets in trouble it will be twice as bad but he never does anything wrong so it doesn't count.

Alec should wait. He could do it, he's not even hungry. He should wait and show them how good and patient he is, especially if Creed didn't. Dad would want him to wait; most kids probably don't, and it would be impressive if Alec did. If Dad were here he'd be giving Alec a long stare that tells him _don't you dare_ without needing any words at all.

But Dad isn't here, is he.

Alec takes three short breaths, then grabs the marshmallow and shoves it in his mouth before he can change his mind. It tastes like sugar and chalk and squishes in his cheek and sticks behind his teeth and his mouth fills with spit to try to swallow and he almost coughs it all back up again but he doesn't.

Alec hates marshmallows. It's the tastiest thing he's ever eaten.

Panic floods Alec as soon as he swallows, but it's too late now. He presses both hands over his mouth in case the marshmallow tries to come back out, and he starts laughing at the thought of Dad's face, solemn and disappointed. Everything is scary and exhilarating all at once and Alec can't stop laughing, not until footsteps sound outside the door and he makes himself stop. He sits up, wipes his mouth, and puts on his good boy face.

The trainer doesn't even look at the plate. "Okay," she says. "You've been very patient. Let's go to the gym and you can show me how fast you run." She gives him a wink, private and friendly. "Your brother isn't here, so let's see what you can do."

* * *

Two weeks later Alec's acceptance letter arrives in the mail. Mom lets Alec read it himself, and he struggles with the hard words but he makes it through to the end and he did it, he made it! Alec's insides itch and he wants to run and jump and float and sing but he doesn't, he just stands there with his hands at his sides and tries to look like he wasn't worried at all.

"Good," Dad says, and Alec can't help it. He breaks into a wide grin, but then Dad gives him a warning look. "Teeth," he says — Alec lost another last week, and only babies smile big and silly with gaps between their teeth — and Alec quickly pulls his lips shut.


	3. Chapter 3

Alec turns seven and officially joins the Program at the end of the first week of July. The tributes for the Hunger Games have reached the Capitol and are on their third day of training, and more importantly, this year marks the last time Alec will ever stand in the square without a Centre bracelet on his arm. Selene and Creed wore theirs to the Reaping, black strands for the both of them, and Alec held a hand over his bare wrist and imagined joining them next year.

Two's tributes are strong and pretty and brave; the boy is even prettier than the girl, with a smile that makes the fluffy lady on the stage giggle and flutter one hand in front of her face. Alec watches him and wonders if one day he'll ever look that confident. Creed will, when it's his turn, as sure as the sun rises and the mountains endure; he'll stand up onstage tall and proud and every inch a Two, and for the first time Alec shakes off a flicker of relief that he won't have to live up to all of this.

His first day in the Program is rushed. The trainers are distracted by the Games, and there are no televisions in the non-Residential sections of the Centre compound but they have runners coming in to tell them what's going on now and then. Alec doesn't pay too much attention to that part, just concentrates on running fast and climbing high and doing everything they ask him to do. By the end of the day he's earned a brownie just like he promised himself he would, and the chocolate sticks to his teeth and all that sugar sits strangely in his stomach but it doesn't matter because he did it.

It's fun at the Centre, all the games and contests and trainers who smile at him and tell him he's a good boy and they're glad he joined. It's even more fun there in comparison to home, because Alec is finally in the Program but it doesn't matter because this is the year Creed is old enough to watch the Games.

Not old enough to sit and watch all the way through; nobody does that until they're actually in Residential, not really, but when it's dark outside and the broadcast comes on with the nightly recap, Creed gets to stay up with Dad and Mom to watch the coverage while Alec has to go to bed. Alec argues half-heartedly — he doesn't really want to watch, not yet, because Uncle Paul says Selene isn't old enough and if he thinks so then it's probably true — and Dad shakes his head but tells Alec he can stay up reading or playing quietly in his room instead until Creed comes up to bed.

It's not so bad during the pre-Games, at least. One night Alec stays over at the Valents', and he and Selene sneak in to watch while crouched behind the kitchen counter and peering around the corner. Except it's just a bunch of people in bright clothes and crazy hair talking a lot, and Selene gets bored and they head back upstairs to play a game of hide and seek in the dark instead.

He asks Creed about it the next day, and Creed tells him about a woman who had live birds living in a cage made out of her hair.

"But —" It's important to respect the Capitol and everyone in it and so Alec tries not to giggle, but it bubbles out of him. "Don't the birds _poop_?"

Creed's eyes go wide and he stares at Alec in scandalized shock before he bursts out laughing. "The broadcast didn't say. Maybe they're special birds that only go when she tells them to. Or maybe there's a special place for them inside her hair where nobody can see."

Alec cracks up even harder, and it's not polite to laugh at Capitol citizens but whoever heard of _birds_ in _hair_. For the rest of the day they play at making the silliest fashions they can come up with and Alec almost forgets that Creed is taking another step without him.

The day after that, though, the tributes move to the Arena. The Centre is closed so the trainers and Residential trainees can watch the whole first day live, and that means all three of them have the full day to play for the first time in forever. Except that Creed keeps stopping halfway his sentences, too excited about getting to watch tonight, and every time he loses track or looks back toward the house Selene's face gets redder and her scowl gets darker.

"Let's play Dark Days," Selene bursts out finally, fists clenched, when Creed suggests they play Arena. "I don't want to play stupid pretend Arena if I'm not allowed to see the real one."

"You will soon," Creed says in his reasonable voice, the one that always makes Selene want to push him into mud puddles, and sure enough her eyes narrow. "I bet you can watch next year. Or maybe the one after that."

Alec steps in before Selene's thundercloud face turns into her picking a fight, because Creed won't fight back since she's younger and that will only make her madder. "Let's just play," he says. "Selene you can be the rebel commander."

Most of the time when they played Dark Days, Creed was the Capitol commander and Selene a Peacekeeper like Uncle Paul, which left Alec to be the rebel who got caught and tortured before execution. But Selene only plays the Peacekeeper when she's in a good mood and gleeful torture for the sake of justice sounds like a fun idea; now, with a fight boiling under her skin and rage making the purple V on her forehead stand out, that's not going to work.

Sure enough, the dangerous light in Selene's eyes fades a little, replaced with one that means equally bad news for Alec but at least she'll be happy about it. "Yes good," she says. "Creed, you be the Peacekeeper. Alec, you're my hostage."

Hostage is even less fun than prisoner — at least the prisoner gets to do things first — but Alec is the one who has to play with Selene for the next three weeks while Creed struts around and refuses to tell them anything about the Games, so whatever keeps her happy. "Okay," he says immediately, and throws Creed a pleading look.

Creed hesitates, then catches Alec's eye and gives in. "Sure," he says. "Lene, your base can be the shed, and you can keep Alec inside. I'll try to infiltrate from the trees."

Selene grins, showing the two sharp side teeth that Uncle Paul thinks are adorable but to Alec makes her look even scarier, and she grabs Alec by the arm and hauls him away to the shed.

The game has a pattern it always follows, just like Arena, which is part of what makes it fun. Today, though, Alec sits in the shed with a length of twine looped around his arms, snuffling in the musty air and listening to Selene and Creed fight outside. Why can't he ever be the brave commander or the reckless traitor? At least the rebel soldiers got good, dramatic death scenes — apparently to Selene everything, from being shot to stabbed to strangled to crushed in a rockslide, ends in choking — but it never works that way for prisoners or hostages.

After watching a moth batter itself against the window trying to get out, Alec shrugs off the rope. He has to stand on a box to reach the sash, and even then he has to push hard to get it open, but finally it slides up and the moth escapes outside. Alec gets another box, braces himself with his elbows and shoves as hard as he can, and finally the window rattles all the way to the top. It's a small hole but big enough for Alec, and he squeezes through and drops to the ground.

Selene and Creed crouch behind trees on opposite sides of the clearing, firing at each other with guns cobbled together with twigs and bits of string, and Alec sneaks past them, walking quietly and avoiding crunchy things on the ground like they're playing Arena after all. Sometimes when they play hide and seek and Selene is it she gets bored and wanders off instead of finding him, and Alec used to sneak inside to see Aunt Julia but he can't do that now. Not when there's a mandatory broadcast. If he can get to the treehouse then at least he should be able to hide until it's over —

"Hey!" Selene shouts, and Alec freezes. "The prisoner is escaping! Prisoners aren't allowed to escape!"

Alec turns around to tell her that prisoners can do whatever they want, and it's not his fault if the rebels had terrible security, when the rock hits him in the head.

"Selene!" Creed yells as Alec stumbles. "You're not supposed to throw rocks!"

"It wasn't supposed to hit him!" Selene protests. "He moved!"

Everything gets very dizzy, and Alec blinks, then blinks again. His left eye doesn't want to see properly — the blood runs into it, hot and stinging like sweat or shampoo but worse, and his vision blurs and he squints his eyes shut but it doesn't help — and the pain shoots through his head all the way down. Creed's arms come up around him and Alec staggers but he can't collapse, he can't. He'll get hurt worse than this at the Centre and the trainers will be watching.

"Count with me," Creed says. "We're going to count, okay, and every time we get to a three or a five or something that's times three or five we clap, okay?"

It's an old game but Alec nods. He counts along with Creed — he forgets to clap on three but remembers at five, and even remembers to clap twice at fifteen — and they're up to thirty when Aunt Julia kneels beside him.

"Thirty is a multiple of five," Aunt Julia says, and oh right, he only clapped once. "Creed, Selene, you two go to the treehouse. I'll take care of Alec."

"I'm okay," Alec says. "It's not bad. I'm not crying."

Aunt Julia sighs and taps Alec's cheek to get him to turn his face so she can see. "I know," she says. "You're very brave. Tell me what happened."

"I hit my head on a rock," Alec says immediately. It's not a lie, and in his memory Selene's face is white and her eyes wide before she ran off to get help. She didn't mean to hurt him; she never does. It's not her fault. "I'm okay, though."

"The rock threw itself, I suppose," Aunt Julia says mildly, dabbing away the blood.

Alec's least favourite part comes next, the sting when she cleans the cut, and he hisses and grits his teeth but still doesn't cry. "I didn't say she threw it," Alec says. Aunt Julia lets out a soft 'ha' and he backtracks, fast. "Anyone! I didn't say anyone threw it. I hit my head. It's fine." He opens one eye to see Aunt Julia raise one eyebrow, and Alec winces. "I didn't tattle, I'm not telling on anyone."

"No, you didn't," she agrees, and Alec's shoulders sag just a little. "You did get cut pretty bad, though, I want to put in some stitches. Come inside and we'll get you fixed up."

"But the Games are on," Alec whispers. "It's mandatory."

"The Games will survive if I take a few more minutes to make sure you're all right," Aunt Julia says firmly. Her voice says there's no point in arguing so don't bother, and Alec doesn't. He does protest when she picks him up, but she gives him another 'don't start' face and he stops in the middle of his sentence. "Good boy," Aunt Julia says, and carries him into the house. She's the shortest of Dad and Mom and Uncle Paul but she's strong, and Alec leans his head against her shoulder and closes his eyes just for a second.

Alec doesn't like getting hurt, nobody does, but he doesn't mind being patched up later. Aunt Julia's hands are gentle and competent, and she keeps him talking enough to be distracted while she stitches up the cut but not so much that it turns into chatter. Slowly the pain goes away, and Aunt Julia is calm and careful and Alec doesn't cry but he's pretty sure if he did she wouldn't get mad. She explains to him what she's doing, about the anaesthetic and why they use ice and how the stitches work, and by the end Alec forgets he was ever hurting.

"I wish I could be a doctor," Alec says, watching Aunt Julia put away her tools.

She pauses, gives him a quiet sort of look. "You could be."

He shakes his head. "I'm going to be a Peacekeeper."

"Peacekeepers have medics, too," Aunt Julia points out, and oh, he hadn't thought of that. "But we're all done here. Why don't you go head back outside."

Alec would much rather stay here in the kitchen for the rest of the day, but the Games are playing and Aunt Julia might take time out to help him but she has to watch. After the first day it's not so important that everyone be in front of the TV all the time, but for the first day those are the rules. "Thank you," he says, and hops down from the table.

Selene is sheepish when Alec comes back outside, and she sidles up to him and hands him a handful of summer wildflowers, dirt still clinging to the bottom of the stems. "For your recovery," she says, her gaze shifty. Alec takes the flowers, and Selene's shoulders drop a little in relief. "We made an awards ceremony for your bravery in a time of war. Creed made you a medal out of an acorn, it's a surprise, c'mon!"

Alec grins. "A surprise, huh?"

Selene rolls her eyes and grabs his arm. "So act surprised! The Centre will teach you how but for now just pretend, don't be such a Twelve."

The last of the pain in his head ebbs away, and Alec laughs and lets Selene drag him out into the forest.

Later that afternoon Dad stops by to pick them up and say hi to Uncle Paul and Aunt Julia. He stops at the sight of Alec, and for a second Alec thinks he has something on his face before he remembers the stitches. "What happened to you?" Dad asks.

"I hit my head on a rock," Alec says, and this time it comes out confident. It's still not a lie, and it's not Dad's job to punish Selene so he doesn't need to know. "I'm okay. Aunt Julia fixed me up."

"Oho," Dad says. "And were you brave?"

Alec looks over at Aunt Julia and can't stop his eyes from getting big and scared. He didn't cry — he didn't! — but it did hurt and he had to close his eyes like a baby, and Dad says he should always be strong and he's not sure if what he did today counted. But Aunt Julia only rests a hand on Alec's shoulder, comforting and not squeezing. "He was very brave, even through the stitches."

"Good," Dad says, clapping Alec on the back. "Come on, then, it's time for supper."

Alec lets out a breath once Dad turns his back, and wipes his hands against his pants. Aunt Julia's eyes are on him but he doesn't dare turn around to see what her face is saying, and he follows Dad and Creed back home without a word.

* * *

That night Alec intends to stay up and wait for the broadcast to finish, but his head hurts and it feels better when he closes his eyes. He doesn't mean to sleep, but one second he's in bed thinking about how soft the blankets feel, and the next he's falling off a cliff and wakes up with a jolt to find Creed crawling into the bottom bunk with him.

"Hey," Alec says, blinking in the darkness, but Creed doesn't answer. He curls right in under the covers like he used to do after a nightmare when he was really little, and he tucks his head in against Alec's shoulder and doesn't say a word. "Hey what happened?"

Creed exhales slowly, and his hands tighten against Alec's back. "It's not what I thought."

"The Games?" Alec asks, his heart tripping. Creed isn't supposed to be like this. He's supposed to be strong always. "Creed, what happened? I won't tell Dad, I promise."

The little clock on the table beside the bed ticks more than one hundred seconds before Creed shifts. "It's the fighting," he says. "It's not like when we play Arena. Not at all." After another one hundred ticks he sucks in a breath, shaky and almost but not quite wet. Alec rubs his back, terror thrilling through him. What is it like, then? "There's so much blood, Alec," Creed whispers finally.

Alec frowns. They've all seen blood; one time last spring Selene stole a knife from the Centre and they were playing at five-fingers and she accidentally sliced the tip of her finger off and she didn't even faint, though she did get wobbly. Alec helped Aunt Julia hold the compress and listened to the lecture about weapon safety and it wasn't that bad. He didn't even freak out when he fell out of the tree and saw the bone sticking out through his arm.

"It's fine," Creed says, shaking himself, and he pulls away. "It's fine, I'm fine, don't tell Dad, okay?"

He climbs back up to the top bunk and fakes sleep-breathing until Alec gives up and stops calling his name.

* * *

"He said blood," Alec says in a low voice. Selene has another dagger stolen from the Centre even though she's not supposed to be allowed near weapons yet, and she keeps flipping it over and over in her fingers, eyes intent. "Lots of blood. How much blood can there be? It was just the first day!"

It doesn't help that Selene and Alec still don't know what the Hunger Games are, really, not yet. There's fighting, and weapons, and it's good to be smart and practical and strong, but other than that — Dad just keeps saying he'll know when it's time, and the one time Alec disobeyed and tried asking an older kid at school he only laughed. The bigger kids think it's funny to leave the younger ones confused.

"I don't know," Selene says, her voice thoughtful. "But Creed doesn't get scared easy, so it must've been awful. Maybe somebody got chomped in half by a mutt! I bet there are mutts big enough to do that."

Alec tries not to think about it but too late — giant teeth sinking in, tearing and ripping and bones crunching — and he shivers. "Well I don't know, but he didn't sleep much last night. Dad's talking to him right now because he was all weird at breakfast. He didn't want to eat anything."

"Lucky." Selene blows out a gusty sigh and makes the knife disappear into her sleeve — or tries, but she misses and it falls onto the grass. "Ugh!" she mutters, picking it up and glaring. "It can't be that hard, Petra can do it!"

Petra, if Alec remembers right, is one of the girls in Selene's year who apparently hates her for absolutely no reason and is super mean and rude and stupid and also has a stupid face. Alec is Selene's friend first so he doesn't say anything, and when she complained at the dinner table once Dad told her that competition will keep her sharp and she should be grateful. He looked at Alec when he said that, but Alec pretended to be very busy cutting up his broccoli.

"You're trying too fast," Alec says. "It looks cool when it's fast but you need to go slow while you practice."

Selene rolls her eyes and shoves the dagger at him. "Fine, then, you do it, if you're so smart."

The Games still have Selene buzzing and looking for a fight, but at least the Centre isn't closed today. The seven-to-nines go for their session at two, and as long as Alec can keep Selene busy until lunchtime then they'll probably be safe. The good thing about taking a rock to the head is that Selene thinks for a few more seconds before pushing him.

"Okay, well, I don't know how to do it," Alec says. "Tell me what I'm supposed to do and then you can watch me and maybe that will help."

"Fine," Selene says with another exaggerated sigh, but she does tell him how to hold it without getting too impatient, and that's pretty much a win.

* * *

That night before bed Alec drinks three big glasses of water, so he's awake, squirming and curling his toes, by the time the broadcast finishes and Creed slips into their room late at night. "Are you okay?" Alec whispers.

Creed pauses while climbing into bed, head and torso on the top bunk and the rest of him hanging down. From Alec's point of view it looks kind of like one of those big mutts Selene was talking about chomped him in half. "Yeah, I'm okay," he says. He doesn't sound it at first, the sentence curling up at the end like a question — _are you asking me or telling me_ Dad likes to say — but then he lets out a big breath and tries again. "I'm okay. Dad talked to me about it and explained everything."

"Was there more blood?" He doesn't actually want to know the answer, not really, but the question pulls itself out of him like Aunt Julia's needle drawing the stitches thread through his skin.

"A little." Creed's legs disappear as he makes it the rest of the way onto the top bunk. "I can't talk about it though. You'll see, okay?"

"Okay," Alec says. He lies on his back and stares up at the slats supporting Creed's mattress, and part of him wants to try to make a joke, or talk about his day at the Centre, anything to pretend like everything is normal and Creed isn't moving even further away, but it doesn't feel right. The tickling feeling from needing to use the toilet doesn't help either.

This time, at least, Creed falls asleep first.

* * *

Alec is in the middle of a dodgeball game a few weeks later when one of the trainers bursts into the room and shouts for them to stop. For a second Alec almost breaks form to complain because his team is _winning_ — the other side only has two players left standing and Alec has gotten three outs so far just by himself — except that the air inside the room practically crackles.

"Two won!" he announces, and the whole room explodes. Alec and the rest of the kids cheer, and the trainers don't because they're grownups but they do grin and clap each other on the back. There's no more dodgeball or races or anything else after that, just a big party where they all get to come into the commissary and have ice cream while the trainers tell them what happened.

The winner is the boy, Devon, the pretty one with the wide brown eyes and nice smile. He won with only seven (seven what Alec doesn't know, and the trainers don't explain it for them) but that doesn't matter because he won fair and square, nothing embarrassing like an avalanche or an earthquake that did the work for him. Devon won and he's coming home and now Alec will get to have Parcel Days when he's actually old enough to remember them.

"I can't wait to watch tonight," Creed gushes on the way home, and Alec only thinks a little bit about tripping him so he'll cut it out just for five minutes. As the days went on Creed had gotten less and less weird about watching — _sensitized_ is the word Dad uses — and for the last few days Dad had to take the clock off the wall because Creed kept looking at it all through supper. "It's going to be so exciting."

Alec thinks about fresh strawberries right there in the kitchen where he can eat them without having to push another boy down and make him cry first, and enough milk and butter and eggs for a real cake. It helps him put some of the annoyance away, though he can't help but snort just a little. "Are you going to pretend to be Devon all the time now?" Alec asks.

Creed actually hesitates, which Alec didn't expect. "I — don't know," he says. A shadow falls over his expression, drawing his eyebrows together, but it's not the kind that makes his shoulders hunch and his feet scuff the ground. "I think Devon is a different kind of Victor than I'll be."

"What?" Alec blinks. "How?"

"Okay, this is a secret, don't tell Dad," Creed says, giving him a warning look, and Alec draws an x over his heart with his finger. "Devon — kissed people a lot. A girl _and_ a boy. Dad didn't like that very much, he kept making that face." Alec doesn't need to be told which face. "I think I'm going to skip that part."

"Huh," Alec says, making a face even though he tries not to because Devon is their Victor now and Victors demand the utmost respect. "Do you think you _have_ to kiss people in the Arena?" It's such a weird thought that it sets off the giggles, and Creed goggling at him in horror only makes it worse. "Do you think in Residential they give kissing lessons?"

Creed stares blankly for a full five seconds before trying so hard not to laugh that he ends up screeching instead. "That is the worst thing I've ever heard," he says through his fingers. "I hate you! I'm going to watch the finale tonight and it's going to be awesome and I won't be able to stop thinking about _kissing lessons_!"

"Ha ha," Alec says, and he does his best Centre-approved grin, pulling his lips back just enough to show the sharp teeth on either side of the front ones.

Creed shoves him into a tree, Alec knocks him back into a bush, and they end up coming home half an hour late covered in dirt and sticks. But the best part is they don't even get in trouble, because District 2 has won the first victory of the 60s and that's way more important than grass-stained knees.

* * *

The next two weeks rush past fast and hazy. All the grownups all over are in good moods, from the trainers to Dad to the shopkeeper who gives Alec an extra scoop of ice cream when Selene convinces him to stop on the way back instead of going straight home. Selene tells Alec he should use it to get away with things that Dad would normally be mad about, but it feels wrong to use a Victor that way and so he doesn't.

He does take advantage a little in private, because Dad says they only need to do the exercises they think they should have to do, and one night Alec skips his wall-sits entirely. Later that night he slips out of bed to prop himself against the wall so his brain will stop yelling at him, but it was nice to relax for a little while after dinner without his legs hurting.

"What do you think of Devon, Dad?" Creed asks at dinner one night. He ignores Alec's rolled eyes — he knows exactly what Dad thinks, staying up to watch and discuss the day's events every day for the last month — and puts on his best mature face like he's not almost bouncing in his chair.

"He was a little unorthodox," Dad says, and Alec has to swallow his mouthful of green beans really fast so he doesn't laugh. 'Unorthodox' is what Dad says when he doesn't like the way somebody does something but they're more important than he is and so he can't complain. That must be the part where Devon kissed everybody, even other boys. "But a strong Victor, I think. No tricks, no Gamemaker assists, just a good, solid win. You can see the quarries in him, too; it's good to have someone go back to our roots."

Their last Victor, a girl named Artemisia, who won when Alec was too little to remember anything except the treats on Parcel Days, is not as Dad-approved, Alec has learned now. Pretty much every time she's on television she's _unorthodox_ , except that one time Dad admitted she's the best swordsman he's ever seen in his life, and he never says things like that so it must be true.

"What's he like?" Alec asks. He's not allowed to ask about the Arena and he isn't going to push it no matter how many times Selene wheedles for details, but the Games are over. Devon is a Victor now, not a tribute, and Alec is expected to get to know his Victors.

"Ah," Dad says. He goes to pour himself another glass of water and stops halfway, lowering the pitcher slowly like he doesn't notice he's doing it. "Well, Alec, I can't answer that yet. We've only seen him before."

Alec frowns, but he doesn't have to ask what that means because Mom answers. "The Arena changes people, Alec," she says. "That's not bad; important things change us, and that's just what happens. We're the same inside, at our core, but the way we react to things can be different. Victors don't always seem like the same person on the other side."

This he didn't know, but it makes sense; Alec likes to think he won't still be shy and scared of being yelled at after he's finished at the Centre. "Like how?" he asks. It's a lot of questions, and normally by now he'd be skirting close to getting a look telling him to be seen and not heard, but maybe Selene is right and now's the time to push, just a little.

"Well, that Artemisia, for one, she acts the same now as she did before," Dad says, and he laughs and shakes his head. "If the Arena changed her, she hasn't shown it. Brutus, on the other hand, he was solid going in, and he's been solid since. I'm not sure it does change people exactly, Dora, more that it strips away the extra and leaves who you really are underneath. If anything, I think Victors are more true to themselves after than they were before the Arena."

Mom gives Dad an indulgent sort of smile that's one eyebrow away from turning into 'watch it, mister', and Alec and Creed exchange furtive grins. _I'm the teacher_ , she told Dad once in a calm voice that made Alec want to hide in a cupboard in case she turned it on him, _I don't like to be lectured._ "As neither of us have ever gone through an Arena this is all speculation," she says, and Dad raises his hands and drops it. "But I was thinking of Lyme. Before the Arena she was very angry, almost sullen, barely gave more than a few words in the interviews. Now —"

"Yes," Dad says with an emphatic nod. "You're right there. Now she's a fine young mentor, and she has a way with sponsors like no one else in her generation. Very personable in her interviews, quite the commanding presence."

"It let her prove herself, I think," Mom says. "It couldn't have been easy, looking the way she does, but now she's a Victor and no one will ever question her."

Dad nods, more thoughtful this time, and this is the most Alec has heard them talk about the Arena or Victors that he can remember. For a minute Alec wonders if they're going to keep talking as though he and Creed aren't there, but then Dad glances at Alec and the faraway look in his eyes fades, his usual sharp attention snapping back. "That was a long answer to your question," Dad says. "The short answer, I suppose, is we'll see."

* * *

"Maybe when you're a Victor and you've proved yourself you'll stop being such a know-it-all," Alec whispers that night.

"Maybe when your face is a Victor your face will stop being such a know-it-all!" Creed shoots back.

"At least you'll have a mentor who can tell you smart things to stay instead of ' _your face'_ ," Alec says.

"I hate you."

"No you don't," Alec says, grinning, and Creed says _hmph_ but doesn't argue.

* * *

Dad and Mom take Creed and Alec into town the day that the victory train returns to District 2. Selene and her parents are there too, and the crowds are excited and chattering and the whole mood of the square feels like the first day of school. Uncle Paul lifts Selene onto her shoulders so she can see above the heads of the adults, and she leans forward with her arms crossed on the top of his head and grins down at Alec.

Creed is too mature for that now, or something, even though a year ago he would've been clamouring for Dad to do the same. Alec should follow his example and be mature too, except that everyone around him is tall and strong and if he leans back to see over their heads the only thing he sees is the bright blue sky above them. The train platform is invisible behind the sea of bodies, and Alec's stomach tightens. His first chance to see a Victor — what if he misses it?

"Joseph," Mom says, chiding. "They can't see."

Dad glances down, and in the distance a train whistle sounds. His mouth twitches. "Go," he says. "Head to the platform and wait for us there. We'll find you after."

Alec doesn't wait for a second suggestion; he and Creed tear off through the crowd, ducking arms and elbows and skirting legs until they reach the front. They're not the only kids with the same idea — there's a smattering of others milling in front of the adults, most with Centre bracelets — and Alec exchanges an excited grin with a girl a little older who has two black strands and one blue around her right wrist.

When the train hisses to a stop, the conversations in the square drop down to whispers, the sound shivering through the crowd and making the hair on Alec's arms stand up. The carriage door slides open and Devon steps out, dressed in white and almost blinding against the sun, with his mentor behind him. He raises a hand to wave and everything explodes, cheering and shouting and fists pumping in the air, and Alec usually tries to be dignified but now he's yelling too.

The funny thing is, Devon actually changes. Getting off the train he looked normal, handsome and proud like any Victor, but when the people call his name he stands a little straighter and his shoulders drop just a bit. His smile shifts too, widening to show his teeth, and that's when it hits Alec that before the smile hadn't quite touched Devon's eyes. Before he'd been happy but exhausted, and Alec knows what that looks and feels like, trying to be good when all you want to do is lie down and sleep until everything goes away.

Devon was a Victor when he stepped off the train, but the people make him better, somehow, and Alec is a part of that. A warm glow sits in his stomach, and he cheers even louder until his throat rasps.

After a while Devon's mentor steps forward and puts a hand on his shoulder. Devon nods, but then he moves to the front of the stage and kneels down, holding out a hand toward the shortest kids at the front of the crowd. For a few seconds everyone freezes — this is Alec's first Victor but it feels like Victors don't kneel, they don't crouch down below eye level and smile at kids — but then one of the girls darts forward and reaches up to slap his hand in a high five.

Devon laughs, and after that Alec nearly falls over as all the kids rush the stage. Creed, for all he's mature and grown up and too old to get excited over things, is right there with them, and when Devon touches his hand Creed's face goes red and he actually giggles, so there. Alec waits until most of the others have finished, feet glued to the concrete, until Devon shifts and braces one hand on his knee and that means he's getting ready to stand. Alec wrenches himself loose and runs to the front, and Devon's eyes crinkle and he holds out his hand low enough for Alec to reach.

Brutus wears the same face Dad makes when Selene steals two cookies instead of one and pretends she miscounted, mouth trying to frown and eyebrows all unbalanced but eyes laughing. When Devon finally stands, Brutus snorts and jerks his head toward the door.

Creed appears at Alec's elbow, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. "Snow above," he breathes. "We touched a _Victor._ "

"Yeah," Alec says. He can't stop staring at the empty platform, and he keeps checking his hand to make sure some kind of mark or tattoo isn't forming on his palm.

"I changed my mind," Creed says, leaning back and staring at the Justice Building and its perfect white marble. "When I'm a Victor I'm going to be just like that."

"Only not as pretty," Alec says, because he has to, and Creed steps on his foot because _he_ has to and everything is wonderful.

They stand there shoulder to shoulder until Mom and Dad come to get them, and they might be too old for this but when Alec reaches over and takes Creed's hand, Creed doesn't laugh or pull away.


	4. Chapter 4

"42," Alec says, looking down at the paper balanced against his thighs. He's too big for the windowsill now after an early growth spurt put an extra few inches on him, but he braces his feet against the opposite side and sits with his legs bent at right angles.

Creed shoots him a look that says _don't pity me_ , but he just stumbled through the 37th with four mistakes so he could use a break. "Okay fine," he says, pushing a hand up through his hair. "42. Arena: desert ruins. Special circumstances: no weapons. Victor: District 2, Nero." He closes his eyes, movement flickering behind his lids. "24th place: D8F, blunt force trauma. 23rd: D7M, blunt force trauma. 22nd : D3F, strangulation. 21st …"

The list goes on through the first week, more blunt force traumas dotted with occasional mutt attacks or dehydration deaths, and Alec shivers a little at how black and white it is, even scrawled in Creed's desperate handwriting. It's months and months still until Creed tests into Residential, but the exam involves memorizing the list of deaths up to the previous Games in any permutation the trainers feel like specifying.

Alec asked Dad why, when Creed came home with his copy of the list, over a thousand names and causes in cramped columns. "Many reasons," Dad said as Creed disappeared into his room to study. "It keeps us humble to remember the ones who came before us, for one; remembering the deaths keeps their sacrifice fresh and stops it from losing meaning. It also helps develop recall, which is important for a host of professions, not just tribute. Think of your mother, and what would happen if she had to look up a fact every time she taught her students, or Julia if she had to consult a book each time someone came in with a head wound."

It makes sense, but Alec isn't looking forward to his turn. He's glad for the extra practice helping Creed; Creed has studied for weeks but now he nearly falters in the middle, trying to recall whether the little girl from Eleven died from a poisoned snake bite or if that was the girl from Five and the boy from Ten found Eleven and bashed her skull in with a rock. He catches his stride again when the Pack breaks, as that's the easy part, and after that he makes it to the end without slipping. Alec checks his answers against the page and gives him a thumbs up.

Creed flops backwards on the floor, arms splayed out. He rubs a hand over his eyes, then thunks his skull against the ground. "Give me another. Not another straight year, how about patterns."

"All right." Alec shuffles the pages, frowning. "Drowning deaths in order." Creed grunts at him, shooting a one-eyed look of exasperation, and Alec amends, "Fine then, do it backwards."

"D1F, 50th," Creed says, straight off and confident. "Then — wait, is choking on blood drowning or asphyxiation? No don't tell me, I'll get it —"

The last few Games haven't had any deaths by drowning, and Dad says it wouldn't be surprising there was a water Arena in the next couple of years. Alec really hopes he's wrong; the Centre can teach them how to fight and use swords — Creed has been training on machetes and khukuri as his signature weapon, though he's too young to specialize for real just yet — but there's not much anyone can do if someone grabs their head and holds it underwater.

After Creed makes it through three different challenges without a stumble he calls a halt, digging the heels of his hands against his eyelids. "My brain hurts," he says. "I hate this part. I wish they could just watch me fight and that's it."

"If we were meant to question then they would be called 'suggestions', not 'rules'," Alec intones in Dad's best lecturing tone, and Creed snickers behind his hands. "You'll do fine, you're good at memorizing."

"I know, I know." Creed sighs. "I'm going crazy, let's go outside."

A bit of wrestling and tree-climbing cheers Creed up, even if he is almost thirteen and should be too old for everything. Creed shrugs when Alec says so, and he brackets the branch with his knees and hangs upside-down. "I'll have lots of time to be too old for stuff in Residential," he says, voice a little breathless from the blood rushing to his head. "I have to study and work hard now, but it's kind of my last chance to be a kid."

It sounds so dramatic when Creed puts it like that, but he's not wrong. The secrets about Residential don't pass the walls but the rumours do, and Alec has heard all of them. He's starting Transition now himself, moving from swinging swords around just for fun and games to actually learning how to use them against another person, and he's only eleven but even his group doesn't play dodgeball anymore.

In Residential the bracelets change. Alec sees them sometimes, the kids who go into town for an hour or two on leave, and they swagger down the street and flash their wrists at the counter and get free juice or ice cream or whatever they want. The beads glitter against the black strands, red and orange and once — with a group of older kids that Alec hid and watched, afraid he'd get in trouble even for looking at them — even silver.

The red beads are dark like fresh blood, and Alec has never worked up enough courage to ask Dad or Mom or even Uncle Paul what you have to do to get one, but he's seen their smiles, sharp and cocky and unafraid of anything. Whatever they do in Residential, it's probably not hide and seek or capture the flag.

"Let's go find Selene," Alec says. The words come out in a rush, and he jumps down from the tree and sets off for her house without waiting for Creed. There's a chill at his back and if he just walks fast enough he can outrun it.

"She's probably out in the woods again," Creed says, jogging to catch up, and Alec shoots him a confused look. Creed's tone is weird, like he's trying for amused but can't quite make it. "It's nothing, never mind."

Selene has gone out in the woods a lot lately, but that doesn't mean anything. Alec still loves the woods, all the soft sounds and the grass under his feet and the branches swishing their leaves overhead, though he can't see Selene going there for peace and quiet. Uncle Paul takes her hunting with his Peacekeeper friends sometimes, and they've invited Alec and he goes because Dad says it's important to toughen up but he doesn't like it. The animals didn't do anything wrong, and it's not like any of them actually need to hunt to eat.

Selene loves it, though, and Uncle Paul's friends love her. They grin and ruffle her hair and set up cans for her to shoot at — she's a good marksman, really good, Alec never sees her miss anymore — and they teach her how to assemble a proper rifle because she can do it in under a minute and they cheer when she gets it. They feel sorry for Alec because he flinches when the guns fire, and the first time he shot and killed a squirrel he actually cried and had to swallow and gulp down air until his lungs hurt and pretend like he twisted his ankle just so nobody would laugh.

Creed starts muttering under his breath, probably the death list again, and Alec shoves his hands in his pockets and doesn't interrupt. He wishes Creed didn't have to do this, cram his brain full of things like decapitation and asphyxiation and exsanguination, but it's important. Creed is going to be in the Hunger Games one day and he needs to know this, he can't shy away in fear when he needs to survive.

Alec liked it better when he didn't know what victory meant, but it makes sense and the world isn't only made up of things you like. The war was terrible, thousands and thousands of people dead, and the Games only take twenty-three lives every year. During the war the Rebels bombed the town where Alec's family lives now, where all the Peacekeepers and their families have always made their home in the comforting shadow of the mountain, and killed more people in one night than all the tributes in the Games put together.

It makes sense when Dad explains it, and when Alec listens to the speeches by the president every year, but it feels different watching it. Every year in the Reaping square they talked about _fight to the death_ but Alec didn't think they meant it, not really. People say they're starving when they really mean it's been five hours since lunchtime. But then Alec sat between Mom and Dad on the couch and watched a girl bite out the throat of the boy pinning her down, and suddenly it wasn't just a figure of speech anymore.

The world keeps changing under Alec's feet, shifting every time he thinks he has his stance firm, but for now there's still him and Creed and Selene together, the three of them, and he'll hold that as long as he can.

They find Selene coming out of the clearing, and she jumps and her eyes do the guilty flicker even though there's nothing wrong with walking through the forest. "Hey," she says, a little too fast, too cheerful, and her eyes are bright and wide and a little bit crazy. "What are you guys doing?"

"Looking for you," Creed says. His gaze runs over her and his eyes narrow for a second, but whatever he sees Alec doesn't and Creed decides not to mention it, instead giving Selene a friendly punch in the shoulder. "I got tired of studying the list, wanted to do something else."

"The list is fun," Selene says, falling into step with them as they turn back. Alec looks back over his shoulder — there's something in the clearing, something he missed, something that Selene brought with her in the hard glint of her eyes and the privately amused twist to her mouth — but it's too late now. Selene's hands are in her pockets, something she usually only does when she's not happy, but now she's grinning and almost bouncing with her steps so who knows what's going on. "I'm going to have it memorized so good by the time it's my turn."

Selene has been studying along with Creed even though her test is over a year away. She says it's because of Petra, the girl she hates, because Petra is better at hand-to-hand and Selene needs something to rub in her face after getting her own slammed into the mats too many times. Maybe that's all it is — and it is at least in part, because even Mom and Dad have heard Selene complain about her classmate, who is not just that tiny bit better at brawling but also one whole month _older_ — but Selene grins to herself sometimes, going through the list, and it makes Alec's spine itch.

"I wish you could just do the test for me," Creed says, jostling her. "You could borrow my clothes and put your hair under a hat, maybe no one would notice."

Selene laughs, a little too hard. "Wouldn't that be awesome! And then once I'm in it's too late for them to take it back, and I could go into Residential a whole year early."

"Hey, I didn't say the whole test!" Creed protests. "Just the list. I can do everything else just fine, thanks."

"Sure, sure," Selene says, patting him on the arm with easy condescension. "You're just mad because I don't have to count on my fingers to know that the one hundred and seventeenth death was a stabbing."

Creed exchanges a questioning look with Alec — she could be bluffing, Selene does that a lot — but Alec lifts his shoulders and lets them drop. Even if she is faking, Alec has absolutely no idea. He does the math in his head (twenty-three deaths per year means one hundred and fifteen deaths at the end of the 5th Games so that makes one hundred and seventeen the second death of the 6th) but by the time he gets there the moment has passed and Selene is secure in her triumph.

"You staying for supper?" Creed asks when they get close.

"Let me run home and change," Selene says easily. "I've got mud and stuff on me. I'll see you in a bit."

Alec watches her stroll off, hyper-casual, then turns back to Creed with a frown. "There wasn't that much mud. And anyway when does Selene care about getting dirt on her clothes?" They've all been scuffling and pushing each other into puddles since they were old enough to walk, so much so that their parents taught them how to do their own laundry if they were going to come home looking like they'd rolled all the way down the mountain. Selene used to skip washing up when she was really little, except she always got caught and it was embarrassing to have Aunt Julia or Mom stand behind her at the sink to make sure she used soap properly.

"Just leave it," Creed says, firm enough to make Dad proud, and now Alec turns to blink at him, too. "Look, it's fine, it's not a big deal, let's just find something to do for a while, okay?"

"Okay!" Alec snaps, and he stomps off to the shed to find their ball. They're getting too old for most games but it's still fun to chuck the ball at each other, and now they play it so that when it hits a limb that limb is dead and they keep playing until only one person is still in the game.

When Selene comes back Alec's bad mood is simmering enough that he throws the ball right at her head, hard enough that if it landed it would bruise and swell up. She catches it one-handed, and Alec shouts, "Right arm out!" with a vindictive glee that still sits a little strange in his gut but has gotten easier after so long at the Centre.

Selene raises her eyebrows and tosses the ball to her left hand, pinning her right behind her back. "Alec Seward, did you just cheat?" she asks, dancing back and feinting a throw.

"Shut up and play," Alec says, glaring, and Selene grins, then whips around and takes Creed out at the knee.

Alec's anger leaches away as they play — it's impossible not to, watching Selene hop around on one foot and Creed hobble on his knees while Alec still has all four limbs because the two of them had a grudge match first — and in the end he doesn't forget about Selene and Creed and their shared secret about the clearing, but it doesn't matter. They're here and having fun and that's all that matters, and Alec nails Creed in the head with the ball and does a one-armed dance while his brother groans and flops backward in defeat.

Selene has one leg left and neither of her arms, and Alec grins at her. "You giving up?" he taunts.

Alec isn't stupid. He's known Selene since they were babies, and anyone who's met her for more than an hour knows what happens when she's challenged. But Alec expected her to run a suicide charge, maybe head-butt him in the stomach and take him down, but instead she turns her head at the last second and takes a chomp out of his shoulder.

"Ow!" He shrieks and pinwheels backward, tugging aside his shirt. There are pinprick holes in the fabric, and she didn't break the skin but it's close, a ragged pink line along his skin. "Seriously?" Selene only cackles louder, and Alec flings up his hands. "I thought you weren't doing that anymore!"

For months after Enobaria's win, Alec could hardly go a day without Selene trying to bite him. She didn't go after his throat because Uncle Paul gave her a good hard warning scold, but that didn't save Alec's arms or shoulder from looking like he'd brought home a wild puppy.

Selene only grins, cheeky and innocent even though Alec is about five years too old to believe that, and snaps her teeth at him. Alec abandons the ball and tackles her to the ground — Creed wriggles over, still not using his limbs, and flops on top of both of them like a giant, heavy caterpillar — and when Mom comes out to check the commotion they're all laughing until they're breathless.

"Come inside, you crazies," Mom says, though all Alec can see of her is his feet because Creed's legs are pushing his face into the grass. "Get your giggles out before you set the table, because I'm not having anyone breaking any plates."

"Yes Aunt Dora," Selene sing-songs like she didn't just lick Alec's neck to try to get him to gross out and move, and Alec bursts out laughing all over again.

* * *

One good thing about the Program is that there's so much to do and remember that it doesn't leave much time to think about anything else. Selene and the clearing and the strange light in her eyes sticks in Alec's head overnight and all through school the next day, but once he gets to the Centre there's no room. It's swords day, and Alec and the others in his year pair off with blunted weapons and try to follow the trainers' instructions on how to swing properly.

"Don't aim for your opponent's weapon," shouts the trainer at the room, hands on her hips and using the same voice as Alec's teacher when she says 'if I've told you once I've told you a thousand times' at kids playing too rough on the swings. "You're not playing patty-cake with swords, you're trying to win a fight! The next one of you who aims for the blade is going to run laps until you fall down, understand?"

"Yes sir," Alec choruses with the rest of them, and he turns back to Payton and sweeps his blade low on his next lunge. Payton parries just in time, but Alec ducks under the blow and slashes forward, catching him across the ribs. Alec grins and Payton's face purples, but he only steps back and readies his sword again.

Alec lets everything else fall away, though he keeps a bit of his attention open for any tips from the trainers. Payton is mad and it's colouring his fight, just like used to happen with Creed when Alec was little and before he learned to control himself. It makes Payton easier to read; the trainers tell them to look to the shoulder, not the arm, when guessing an opponent's next move, but Alec doesn't even have to. Payton practically screams everything he's about to do before he does it.

Sure enough Payton attacks again in a full-out charge, and Alec barely has to try to overbalance him, get under his guard and stop with the practice blade against his neck. By this point Payton's teeth must be aching in his head with how hard he's clenching them, but Alec doesn't care. If he doesn't want to lose then he should stop losing, that's what Dad always said whenever Alec complained about Creed being a sore winner.

Alec catches Payton in another finishing move, but this time the trainer yells "Freeze!" and they do. Payton's arm is wide, his sword nowhere near Alec's side, and Alec has his under Payton's chin, forcing his head up. The trainer jogs over, and Alec doesn't move but he feels the attention of the room turn toward them.

"That's good, Alec," she says, and Alec doesn't smile or react or anything but the tips of his ears do tingle a little. Nothing he can do about that, though, and the trainer doesn't say anything if she noticed. "Good form, nice economy on that last strike. See, kids, you don't have to wave your sword around like you're swatting flies with it. Too bad you're dead, though."

"Sir?" Alec bursts out without thinking, but he doesn't move. The funny part is that Payton tries to look smug and pleased but it's clear he has no idea either, and they exchange a confused look. Payton's sword arm is beginning to tremble but he holds it, eyebrows pushing together in determination.

"Payton, left hand," the trainer says, and Payton blinks at her but raises it. He'd let go of the sword and swung it right-handed to get a lower arc, leaving his left one free. The trainer steps over, takes his hand and jabs the knuckles right between Alec's ribs. "If he had a knife, you'd be well on your way to bleeding out right now."

Alec presses his lips together against the automatic protest, but the trainer raises an eyebrow. "Something to say?" she asks, and it's not really a question.

"But he didn't," Alec says. He wouldn't talk back but she did _ask_ , and that doesn't mean he won't be punished for his answer anyway but here's hoping.

"But he could have," the trainer says, and oh. Alec thinks of Selene finally mastering the trick of slipping a blade up her sleeve and trapping it against her wrist, and he looks down at Payton's hand and imagines a knife poking out between his fingers. "You're right, this was a one-weapon fight, and you won that. But we're not teaching you kids how to win practice fights, are we? You need to watch your guard all the time, never leave yourself open. Why?"

She looks at Alec expectantly, but this one at least is easy. "Because I have to block every single time, but he only has to hit me once."

Payton's expression has gone calculating, and the next time they fight Alec will have to watch it. The other boy might not be as good but he knows how to cheat, and the Centre rules about cheating are pretty much that there's no such thing. The Gamemakers won't listen if they cry 'time out' in the middle of the Arena, after all.

"That's right," the trainer says. "All right boys, at ease. Take five, then come back and we'll try again."

Alec sets his sword carefully aside before flopping back on the mat, ignoring the sting of rubber and sweat inside his nose making his eyes water. "Nice one," he tells Payton, grinning. "You beat me so good you didn't even know it."

"Shut up, Seward," Payton snorts, dropping down cross-legged and combing fingers through his hair to flick away sweat. "I'm going to break your nose next time."

Not likely. The funny thing about losing to Creed since they were toddlers is that fighting kids his own age and his own size is a lot easier. Alec doesn't even bother to push himself up onto his elbows, just waves a hand like he's shooing away flies. "If you can break my nose, you deserve it," he says.

Kevin, the smallest and fastest boy in their year, nudges Alec with his foot. "You're gonna have to step it up if you want to keep winning, though. I heard the trainers talking."

This time Alec does sit up. "What?" he demands, staring Kevin down, but he doesn't back down or start giggling like he usually does when he's lying. "What did they say?"

"You always stop," Kevin says with a shrug. "You never let any hits land. You do the thing where you stop right before so they know you won but you don't finish it. You can't do that forever."

"We're not supposed to finish it, we're practicing technique," Alec says, but last week Grant smashed Chess right across the face instead of pulling back, and he got a warning for excessive force but they gave him a cookie right after.

"Yeah, and what are you going to do when we're not just practicing technique anymore?" Kevin asks. "We're in Transition. They're gonna stop telling us to pull our punches soon. And what about the Arena? What about when you have to stick your sword through another tribute and not just a training dummy?"

"You don't stick your sword through a person," Alec snaps. "Remember? Too much chance of hitting bone and your blade getting stuck, the trainers said so. Slash across the belly, works faster and better."

Kevin rolls his eyes. "Right, okay, because you can't punch somebody but you could totally slash them with a sword. All I'm saying is you're going to get cut if you don't fight harder."

It makes sense, is the worst part. They're not here to kill each other in training or anything, and they get in trouble if they keep going after a trainer calls time, but Selene has been coming home with occasional black eyes and broken noses and cracked knuckles for a while now. She blames Petra for starting it and always says the other girl looks worse than she does, but either way she sure isn't holding back.

Rumours about Residential are just that, but whispers trickle down. Alec has heard that the trainers don't always call a match at first blood, that sometimes the trainees fight until one of them passes out if they're not good enough to end it first. Alec has never had to go to medical but some of the others have, and one time Kevin said he saw a boy there getting his jaw reattached.

But the others are looking at him, and Alec might turn pale at the thought of attacking someone full out but he's not stupid enough to say it. "I can do whatever they tell me to do," he says, raising his head and giving them Dad's best cool stare. "Holding back doesn't mean I can't, it just means I'm not."

Their break ends soon after that, and Alec and Payton pair off again. Payton has his eyes narrowed from the start, and for once he doesn't rush in straight off but takes his time. He's looking for openings, a hole in Alec's guard so he can use what the trainer showed him, and this time he's barehanded but Alec would bet his dessert that next time he'll have stolen a knife from somewhere.

Alec's stomach flutters with nerves all the way up to his throat, but there's only one thing to do. If he doesn't want something to happen then he has to stop it from happening, and asking nicely isn't going to cut it, not this time. And so this time Alec charges first — Payton's caught off-guard, stumbling back and nearly turning his ankle but catching himself a second later — and Alec presses in close.

The fight is close, too close to do anything fancy with their swords, and soon Payton throws his arm off to block a blow. Except instead of stopping and moving for the next strike Alec keeps going, pushing their blades back and around to the side. Payton winces as his shoulder protests the angle but he's too mad to back down now, and Alec feels the resistance all the way down their locked blades and through his forearms. He takes one step in closer, and _pushes_ again.

Payton's shoulder dislocates with a popping sound that feels way less dramatic than it should. He howls and loses his grip on the practice sword, and Alec twists and jerks his elbow up, catching him right in the jaw and snapping his teeth together before stepping back.

"Excessive force, Alec," the trainer calls and Alec drops his weapon, holding up his hands as Payton collapses, blood reddening the inside of his mouth where he bit his tongue. The trainer kneels and helps Payton to his feet, one arm around his waist. "All right, boys, back to drills," she says. "Alec, laps."

Alec nods and jogs out of the weapons room toward the track, but he takes a detour first. There's no one watching and so he ducks into the bathroom, where he grips the counter and leans over the sink, heaving in gasps of air. The urge to throw up has him shaking, and it presses up inside his throat and underneath his chin but he holds it, keeps swallowing the bile and forcing the muscles in his stomach to unclench.

Finally the wave passes. Alec splashes cold water on his face, scrubs his hands until they're pink and leaves without looking at himself in the mirror.

The trainers call him back after five laps, but Payton isn't back yet when Alec returns to the weapons room. "Geez, Seward," Kevin mutters as he passes. "Take it easy, we were just teasing."

"Maybe don't, then," Alec snaps, and Kevin backs off.

They give him a brownie when drills finish, and it tastes like dirt but that's not the point, and Alec makes sure to finish it and lick the crumbs off his fingers before heading out to find Selene for the walk home.

* * *

"Was that your first excessive force?" Selene asks, grinning, and she punches him in the arm. "Good for you! I mean, it's totally late, but whatever, it still counts."

"Thanks," Alec says dryly. The brownie sits in his stomach like a rock but he has to get used to telling the story while sounding enthusiastic before telling Dad, and Creed and the other almost-thirteens have another two hours at the Centre still so he can't practice with him. "It felt weird. I just knew he was going to come after me so I wanted to end it first."

"It sounds like he deserved it either way, what a jerk." Selene waves a hand at him. "Never mind jerks, they deserve what they get."

Alec glances at her, notes the faint bruise on her cheekbone. "And what did Petra deserve today?"

"Huh? Oh." Selene pokes the bruise and shakes her head. "Nah, that wasn't her, that was somebody else. Petra doesn't go for the cheek because it's a cheap shot and she's too good for that, or something. One day I'll get her to do it, though, and then I win."

Alec and Selene were never exactly kindred spirits, but lately it feels more and more like she's becoming a completely different person that Alec will never understand. "So you'll be the one with the cheek fracture, but that means you win?"

Selene rolls her eyes at him. "Yes," she says in the voice that means he's an idiot and she's very mature for explaining this to him, again. "Because I made her break one of her rules. Shut up, it makes sense if you're not a goody-goody."

"I dislocated another kid's shoulder and made him bite through his tongue today," Alec shoots back, and it doesn't feel quite so weird to say this time so maybe it's working. "I don't think I'm that goody-goody."

"Do it again and we'll see," Selene says, but then her expression goes thoughtful. "Actually, hm, no, come with me instead."

Alec follows her when she takes the first path into the woods, and his heart hammers like the day the trainers first wheeled out the weapons racks. The woods have always been Alec's place; the trees and the sunlight and the birds, the way the earth smells and the leaves shift in the breeze calm him down when the worst of the nerves and fear and crush of being not good enough make it hard to breathe. Selene likes the woods too, but because it gives her a space to run around and break things and make up elaborate stories that aren't possible in the garden. Whatever she's taking him to see, Alec is pretty sure it's not going to be a bird's nest.

"You'll have to be quiet," Selene tells Alec as they pick their way through the path, avoiding fallen branches. Alec shoots her a look — of the two of them he is hardly the one to need that reminder, unless they're playing Arena and Selene is pretending to stalk her prey — but Selene only stares back, hard and challenging. He holds up his hands and Selene nods and jerks her head, motioning him further. "I think they're starting to recognize me so it's getting harder, but it should be fine. Just stay still when I tell you to."

Finally they come out into the clearing. The underbrush is soft but scattered, bare patches where leaves have been kicked away, and Alec stands in the centre and looks up at the expanse of sky between the trees. The birds chitter in the trees, and squirrels scamper through the branches. "Okay," Selene says in a low voice. "Don't move until I tell you, okay, this will just take a minute."

Alec holds still, but a flash of light catches his eye and he turns his head just in time to see Selene pull a knife from her sleeve. "Wh—" he starts to say, but she pulls her arm back and lets the weapon fly.

The squirrel it hits lets out a frantic squeak and falls to the ground. "Ha!" Selene says, clapping her hands together, and she dashes forward and yanks the knife free.

It's a full five seconds before Alec finds his voice, choked as it is by horror. Selene crouches down beside the squirrel, poking at it with an experimental deliberateness. "What are you doing?" Alec asks. His mouth has turned to sandpaper, and he can't stop thinking about the brownie that's now trying to crawl out of his stomach. "What — why?"

Selene tosses him a haughty look over her shoulder. "Don't you know what you have to do to get into Residential?" she scoffs.

Alec wipes his hands against his shirt. "There's a sparring match and a weapons test and a time trial, and you have to get the list right…"

He trails off when Selene rolls her eyes. The thing is, Alec isn't stupid, and Selene isn't really asking him to guess, not with the squirrel lying on the ground with its sides heaving and Selene eyeing it with her head cocked. She picks up the knife, and Alec turns away just in time to avoid whatever makes the squirrel let loose a flurry of squeaking. "Selene —" he chokes out.

"I've seen the room where they keep them," Selene says meditatively. It's the most relaxed Alec has heard her in months. "One of the older girls showed me. They keep the door locked most of the time so I didn't get to see inside, though."

"Maybe she was lying," Alec says, feeling like the time he followed Creed jumping into the lake and the cold water knocked the air out of him. "Trying to impress you or something."

"That's why I asked Creed." Selene's smile curls around her tone. "He said not to tell you. He said you wouldn't like it."

"Does Creed practice with you?" The thought of Creed out her in the woods, kneeling in the fallen leaves with a stolen knife in his hands and a thrashing squirrel in front of him, brings a sour taste to Alec's mouth.

Selene snorts. "No, he said it's cheating to do it early. Hunting with Dad is different, I guess. Now are you going to come over here or not?"

The squirrel squeaks, and it hits Alec that this isn't going to be over until he does. One time while hunting Selene missed and hit the leg instead, and she'd disappeared into the bushes after it for a full minute before Uncle Paul sent Alec to ask what was taking so long. He found her watching the animal cry and whimper and drag itself over the grass, though when she heard Alec coming she finished it off with a headshot and brought the carcass back.

Back then Alec figured it was curiosity, like the time he'd tripped in the woods and sliced his knee on a tree root and sat there staring at the blood oozing out of the cut. Now — well, it's what the Centre wants them to do, even if she's got a head start on it. If he asked Dad about it, Dad might not tell him to cheat but he sure wouldn't be proud of Alec for backing away.

"Okay," Alec says, and he drags himself over, every step like slogging through ankle-deep mud.

"Here," Selene says, moving over to give him room. The squirrel's eyes have gone wide and glassy, one paw twitching at its side. Blood mats the fur, dripping down onto the leaves below, and Alec's stomach heaves but he's used to that and nothing comes up. Selene goes to hand him the knife, then changes her mind and flips it over in her hand instead. "Let me show you a trick," she says eagerly, the way she used to about making paper helicopters or blowing bubbles in milk.

"No, stop!" Alec explodes a little way through the demonstration. He can't figure out whether to cover his eyes or his ears or run away, and instead he freezes and tries to tune out the sounds by imagining a roaring sound filling his ears instead. "No, it's fine, just give me the knife!"

Selene frowns but hands it over, and Alec's hands shake but he's cleaned animals before and it's not that different. Not that different at all, he tells himself over and over and moves the knife in one swift stroke. The squirrel jerks, then lets out one last breath and stills, its heart slowing underneath his fingers. Alec hands the knife back to Selene and wets his lips.

"Ugh," Selene mutters, picking up a handful of leaves and wiping down the blade. "Trust you to take the fun out of it."

"Maybe next time," Alec says dully. He wipes a hand across his forehead, not surprised when it comes back damp. "Are you coming back home?"

"Nah," Selene says. She tips herself back onto her heels, looking up at the trees. "I think I'm gonna go again." She glances at him, eyes going narrow. "You're not going to tell on me, are you?"

And say what? That she was getting ahead of the Centre, again, and would probably pass her exam at the top of her class? That Alec had freaked out like a baby over a squirrel when he'd sent another boy to medical earlier that day? Uncle Paul made it halfway through Residential, the same as Dad and Mom. Aunt Julia probably had to cut up animals when learning to be a doctor. The only one weak enough to cry over a squirrel's terrified squealing is Alec, and the last thing he needs right now is for Dad to find out.

"No," Alec says, and Selene gives him a suspicious once-over before nodding. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Wash your hands," Selene reminds him. "Mom almost caught me one time."

Alec looks down at his blood-stained fingers and his stomach rolls all over again. "Thanks," he says, and all but flees the clearing at top speed.

He stops outside the house to rinse his hands with the garden hose, scrubbing his palms together until the water runs clear. Dad won't be home from work for another couple of hours but Mom is in the kitchen chopping things up for supper. Normally Alec stops to help her but today he heads straight upstairs, flinging himself onto his bed and burying his face in the pillow.

If the universe were fair then Alec would at least have until supper to calm down and think about how to frame what happened at the Centre today in a way that will make Dad proud, but because everything is horrible he only has a few minutes before Mom comes upstairs after him. "Alec?" she calls, knocking on the door frame. "Do you want to talk?"

"No," Alec says, not sitting up. Blood pounds in his ears and it's hard to breathe with his face mashed flat but if he looks up then it's over.

The mattress creaks and dips as Mom sits next to him. "Alec, you can tell me. I'm not going to be mad."

Wait, what? This time Alec does sit up. "Mad?" he asks. "Why would you be mad?"

"I'm not," Mom says, but then she shakes her head. "You tracked in leaves and mud, your sleeves and pants are soaking wet and there's dried blood stuck to your forehead. You want to tell me what happened?"

"Oh." Alec touches his forehead and feels blood crumble away under his fingertips. So much for stealth. "I — was practicing. I know I'm not supposed to, I just thought it would be a good idea. I want to be ready."

"And?"

Alec looks at Mom, who worked as a Peacekeeper for twenty years and has never, as long as Alec can remember, flinched at anything. The time a bird smashed into the window and blood smeared all over the windowpane she was the one who broke its neck to end its suffering. She buried the bird in the yard and cleaned up the blood and feathers and told Creed to take Alec outside for a run until he calmed down. Alec tries to picture her crying over dead squirrels as a little girl and comes up blank.

"I don't know," he says finally. Not knowing things is bad, but Dad always says it's better to admit ignorance than vomit out stupidity. "I don't think I would've got a very good mark."

Mom laughs, and they don't hug in their family but she does wet her thumb and start scrubbing the blood from Alec's forehead. "I practiced too," she says. "Of course, then I got so obsessed with acting like I hadn't practiced when the actual test came that I almost failed. Not my finest moment."

Alec laughs in spite of himself, in spite of Payton bleeding on the mats and the squirrel's body slowly cooling on the forest floor. "I bet you did great."

"I'm sure I entertained them, if nothing else." Mom pushes Alec's hair back from his forehead, and Alec has to stop himself from leaning into the touch. "It will get easier, like anything."

It had better, but Alec knows more than to say that out loud. "It's okay if I do it fast, right?" he asks. A risky question, maybe, but he has to know.

"It's up to you how you do it, and I don't know how they grade," Mom says, giving him a mild warning look. "But I've never heard of anyone failing because they finished too quickly."

Better than nothing, at least. Alec nods. "Okay," he says. "Thanks, Mom."

"Any time." She chucks him under the chin, then stands. "If you get your homework done before dinner then you can have tonight free, just this once."

"Thanks, Mom," Alec says again, startled, and Mom smiles and taps her finger to her lips.

* * *

Creed passes the Centre's entrance exam in the highest score bracket, and he comes home with the piece of paper to prove it. Dad claps him on the shoulder and Mom gives him a rare hug; Selene snatches the paper out of his hands and all but devours it with her eyes, reading over every word and searching for clues that might help her with her own test, but of course the paper doesn't give any details about what happened.

He has one week to settle things at school and say goodbye to family and friends who aren't coming with him. Dad and Mom host Creed's dedication party at the end of that week, the night before he leaves for Residential with nothing more than what he can fit in the small cardboard box the Centre provided him. "We're not celebrating you leaving," Dad says to Creed, laying both hands on his shoulders. "We're celebrating you becoming part of something bigger."

The party feels a lot like Creed's seventh, lots of Dad's friends and not too many of Creed's. Most of Dad's friends have kids in Residential or nearly themselves, and most of Creed's are either there already or they're studying for their own tests and can't take a night off every time one of them passes. Except this time there's less cheering and speeches and more quiet congratulations, and Alec still finds himself alone and ignored but can't dredge up the jealousy, not this time.

Selene, on the other hand…

"I wish I was going," she says, watching Creed shake hands with Dad's boss down at Eagle Pass.

"Soon," Alec reassures her, and Selene makes a dissatisfied sound and heads into the kitchen to refill her glass.

She and Alec don't hang out much anymore; Alec stopped coming with her to the clearing after practicing enough that his hands no longer tremble even when he has to do it bare-handed, and Selene stopped having an interest in much of anything else. He doesn't go to her house much anymore either, even though Aunt Julia is still his favourite grownup, because it feels like someone took a giant paintbrush and washed everything over with the dingy leftover water. The closer Selene gets to her thirteenth birthday the quieter Uncle Paul and Aunt Julia get, and the more worried looks they exchange when she's not looking. Everything at the Valents' feels dimmer, duller, except for Selene, who keeps getting sharper and angrier and shines bright like a sword glinting in the sunlight.

Sometimes Alec looks at Selene and Creed and has to squint, like they're far ahead in the distance, silhouetted against the sun, and he's stumbling along miles back in the shadow of the mountain. One day they'll be off doing great things and he'll be the one back home telling people he used to know them in the hopes that someone will be impressed.

Alec slips out and climbs up onto the roof like he used to do as a kid, but the funny thing is that he's out there for maybe five minutes before Creed hauls himself over the side and joins him. "Hey," Creed says, settling beside Alec and leaning back on his hands. "Missed you in there. It's not a party without my brother."

Before Alec can answer there's another scuffle below, and Selene scrambles up to sit on Creed's far side. "Oh sure, leave me in there with all the boring grownups," she says, shooting them both a pointed glare. "I see how it is."

Creed laughs and slings an arm around her shoulders, then another around Alec before Selene can protest the special treatment and try to bite him. "Soon it will be your party and then you'll be the centre of attention, don't you worry," he says.

"Nah," Selene says in a carefully modulated tone, and Alec glances at her over Creed's shoulder. "No party for me, they don't want me to go. Not that they're going to stop me."

"No one can stop you from doing anything," Creed says, nudging her, and Selene laughs and relaxes against his side, just a little. "Fine, no party, then, but you'll be taking your own exam before you know it."

Selene sighs and tilts her head back, and Alec follows to stare up at the smattering of stars across the indigo sky. "I wish," she mutters. "It feels like forever, and it's going to suck without you here."

"Hey," Alec protests, but more out of habit or the need to keep face than anything. Selene hasn't confided in him seriously in months now, closer to a year.

"You know what I mean," Selene says, though she at least has the grace to look a little embarrassed. "And — this is it, isn't it? By the time we're all in Residential together we'll be in different streams and we won't get to hang out, not like here."

Creed sighs and leans his head against Selene's. Normally she'd make a face and pull away, maybe jab him in the ribs first, but today she makes an unhappy sound and moves a little closer. Alec has watched her slice a squirrel across the belly, been there at recess when a classmate called her crazy and she shattered his jaw, and she'd scared him then but this is different, almost worse. Selene covered in blood and grinning, Alec can handle. Selene sad and vulnerable feels like the whole world just flipped inside-out.

Alec's brother is leaving and his friend is becoming someone else and Alec scrambles to get a firm hold on something, anything. "But it won't be that bad," he says. "We might not train together but we'll have free time, right? They can't make everyone train all the time. We can find each other then and it'll be just the same."

The words taste stale even as he says them but it's all they've got. Anything to chase the shadow from Creed's face and make Selene's mouth stop turning down at the corners. Creed glances over at Alec, and for a second he wears that small, sad smile he does when Alec says something that's very _little brother_ and means he's too young to understand, but then it disappears.

"Yeah," Creed says, pulling Alec in closer against his side, and he pokes Selene in the ribs to make her squawk. "We'll still see each other. And then I'll win and Selene you'll win and we'll be back to back Victors just like Nero and Callista in the 40s, and Alec you'll be the best Peacekeeper ever and you can come see us in the Village and have a guest room in both our houses so you always have a place to stay when you're on leave."

In the last Hunger Games, the girl from Ten paired up with her district partner, a boy barely old enough for the Reaping, and every night after the Anthem played she would tell him a story. When the food ran low she told him a tale about escaping the Arena together, just the two of them, and after he fell asleep she picked up the big butcher's knife she kept in her bag and she killed him right there. She died anyway a few days later, at the hands of the girl from One, but her stories and the way she took care of her district partner stayed on the commentary for almost a week after.

It sticks with Alec now, the girl spinning up a bunch of pretty lies because the truth hurts worse, but for the boy they were never anything but real. He fell asleep dreaming of freedom and now he's free, and the rest is details. Alec isn't stupid; Creed is older and quieter and more and more serious already, always taking a few seconds before remembering to laugh at jokes that used to crack him up, and Selene has blood under her fingernails even when her hands are clean. Meanwhile Alec just keeps walking forward into the dark, hoping he doesn't trip on the path he can't see that Dad promises will keep him safe.

Things are changing, and after tomorrow they won't ever be the same. Alec isn't stupid, and neither is Creed, or Selene, but they've known each other forever and that doesn't just go away.

"When I win I'm going to put an ice cream machine in every room of my house," Selene says. "And every year on my birthday I'll set off fireworks over town that spell out 'SUCK IT PETRA'." She lets out a wistful sigh. "It'll be the best thing ever."

Creed catches Alec's gaze and rolls his eyes, familiar and amused just like they used to before Selene and Creed started having more things to be secretive and chummy about together, and Alec turns his laugh into a cough.

"Look out, Panem," Creed says, raising his voice. He touches his fist to his chest in the traditional gesture, then outstretches his arm toward the distant mountains. "We're going to rule the world."

* * *

 **NOTE: If you want to stop before the end and pretend everything's okay, this is the place to do it. I won't blame you. Otherwise, read on.**


	5. Chapter 5

The night before Creed's Reaping, Alec breaks his streak of following every rule at the Centre by disobeying three at once.

Everyone over fourteen knows how to jimmy the doors so the automatic locks don't kick in after lights out, but tonight is the first time Alec has ever done it. He waits until the night trainer passes by on her rounds, then slips out into the dimly-lit hallway and hugs the wall until he gets to the kitchens. There he works the lock on the door to the storage room — Tanner showed Alec how to do this when they were thirteen, Alec jittery and looking over his shoulder every two seconds, and Tanner couldn't stop vomiting after his third kill test and got cut but Alec remembers — and makes off with a couple of apples and a handful of oatmeal cookies.

That's two, enough for laps and suicides until his muscles turn to jelly and Alec throws up all over himself, but the worst one is still coming. His third is bypassing the corridor that will take him back to his room in the Junior Wing, with the rest of the kids who haven't done their Field Exam yet, and sneaking down past the Senior dorms to the big suites right at the end of the hall where nobody gets to go unless they have a gold bead on their wrist.

Creed's name went up on the list last January at the end of the Victory Tour. For the last six months Alec hasn't managed to see him at all, and yesterday a trainer pulled Alec aside and told him that, brother or no, he wouldn't be allowed to see Creed off at the Justice Building but would have to go back to the Centre with everyone else. Alec has been in Residential for nearly three whole years and never even showed up late to breakfast, but if they think he's going to let his brother walk into the Arena without a goodbye — well.

Now Alec is out after hours in a restricted area with his hands full of stolen snacks. He hasn't talked to Selene since she took her Centre Exam — no goodbye party for her, just like she predicted, and Uncle Paul and Aunt Julia had stayed home and not come over for dinner or anything for a week after — but he likes to think she'd be proud.

Unfortunately, being new at rule-breaking means Alec isn't exactly good at it; he got himself here but he didn't factor in how to get into the locked Volunteer suite on his own before one of the trainers catches him. Alec stands in front of the door for a minute as his heart thuds in his chest, but finally he knocks the bottom of the jamb with his foot and prays that Creed is awake. He's going to feel very stupid if his brother decided to get a good night's sleep instead.

Alec's breaths seem to fill the hallway with their echoes until he swears the trainers will be on his back any second, but then a sliver of light appears under the door and a light scraping clicks at the lock on the other side. A moment later the door opens and Creed stands in the gap, face confused for a second but clearing as soon as he realizes. "Hurry up before they see you," Creed says, stepping aside to let Alec pass and shutting the door behind them.

The bright light stings Alec's eyes after creeping around with nothing but the small, round nighttime illumination at the bottom of the walls close to the floor, and he stands there blinking stupidly, holding the apples and cookies in the biggest room he's seen since leaving their parents' house.

"It's big, isn't it," Creed says. He puts his hands on his hips and spreads his chest in an imitation of Dad's best power pose, and Alec almost laughs because Creed never does that unless he's embarrassed and trying not to rub his neck. "It's weird. I guess it's so we get used to it before we're in the Capitol. Nobody wants to see Twos ogling everything like we're a pair of farmers."

"I guess not," Alec says. His own room in the Junior wing is a ten-foot shoebox; the bed touches three of the walls, and there's just enough room for a small dresser and a bit of floor space. They say the Senior dorms get a desk and a bit more space, but Alec won't know for sure until he passes his midpoint exam. All Alec's friends have had theirs and moved on; he's the only one in their year left. He's trying not to think about why they're holding him back, or what he might have to do in order to earn it.

Creed finally turns his attention to the food in Alec's hands. "Did you steal those?" he asks, incredulous, and when the hot flush creeps up Alec's throat Creed laughs and takes the ill-gotten bounty from him. "This is great! It's a real feast. Come on in, sit down for a while. You must be freaking out after all that."

Alec makes a face but doesn't argue, and he sits down in a chair while Creed pulls a knife from under his pillow. He scores the first apple around the centre, then grasps it in both hands and twists. The apple breaks apart with a loud _crack_ that makes Alec jump, but Creed only holds it up with a bright, boyish grin and shows Alec the half with the seeds, arranged in the distinctive five-point star pattern. Uncle Paul showed them that, years ago; Alec had thought it magic, at the time. A few quick strokes with the knife and Creed pops out the core, tossing the pieces without looking to land in the garbage can with a dull rattle.

"Here," Creed says, handing both halves to Alec and starting on the second. He's contented as he works, focused on his task as though tomorrow weren't the biggest day of his life, and Alec can't help but watch him. His hands are large and wide-knuckled like Dad's, palms and finger pads scored with calluses and small healed-over cuts, and he hums to himself as he slides the knife through the apple's flesh. He grins at the seed pattern in the second one too, and for a second he's ten and not eighteen, time sliding away from Alec in a strange rush before Creed flips the knife in his fingers and the light flashes on the blade.

Alec takes a bite of apple, sweet and tangy and crisp all together, and for once it doesn't taste like dirt and guilt for having filched it. Creed slices off a chunk and bites it right from the tip of his knife, and he leans back in his chair and props his feet on Alec's thighs as though it hasn't been years since they've really spoken properly. "So," Creed says, gesturing with his knife hand. "How are you? It's been forever."

"My kill test," Alec says. The juice will dry sticky on his fingers but it feels weird to lick it off like they're kids, and so he sits and presses his fingertips together, feeling the resistance when they separate. He did the same thing with the blood two years ago, and quickly blinks to clear the image from his mind before it can coalesce.

"That's right."

They didn't talk about it then, not really; Creed had found Alec on top of the climbing wall after he came back to the Centre, pale and with a new, shiny red bead that kept drawing his gaze. Creed dropped down next to him and they sat with their legs dangling over the edge, Alec pushing his feet against the numbered outcroppings. For a long time he'd thought they sat in silence until finally he'd registered Creed's hand on the back of his neck, his brother's voice repeating "It's okay, you're okay" until it turned to meaningless syllables in Alec's mind.

Alec had cried, he thinks, but he'd kept his breathing even and not let himself make a sound and Creed didn't point it out. The trainers never called him out and he'd moved on with the rest of the Fourteens, so if he had it must not have been other than then.

The silence stretches between them like a wire pulled taut, and just like a wire Alec hesitates to slice it in case it snaps back and slices him. Five years have passed — one-third of Alec's life — since Creed and Alec have been able to talk about anything for real, and Alec's brain crowds close with words and confessions that he shoves back because he knows better than to bother a tribute the night before the Reaping.

Creed sighs, digs his heel into Alec's leg. "Come on. This is the last time we'll be able to see each other for a while. Tell me something new. You're still my brother."

The first thing that comes to mind, Alec immediately silences by shoving a whole chunk of apple in his mouth and working it around in an attempt to chew even as his face burns. Creed is the perfect tribute and the perfect Seward, and he's going into the Arena but if he'd chosen to be a Peacekeeper instead then he would've become a perfect one of those, too. And twenty years later he'd marry his sweetheart from the Academy and have two beautiful, perfect children and start the whole thing over again.

That's Alec's job now, and the apple goes down in a hard lump as he swallows, trying his best to shut out the memories of Chase's hands on his biceps. Now Creed's eyebrows have knit together, and he pulls his feet out of Alec's lap and sits forward, abandoning the knife and the apple on the end table and fixing Alec with the same concerned stare he's worn since they were little. "Hey," he says. "Tell me."

Alec runs a hand through his hair. "You remember Devon, the way he was with the Careers?" he says finally. Back then Alec only had Creed's description, but since then he's actually seen it. Devon's manipulation of the Pack has been a trainer staple since it happened, though the trainers haven't recommended anyone actually go so far as to replicate his tactics. "With the girl from One and the — boy from Four?"

Creed raises an eyebrow. "I think it's burned into my brain. If you're wondering if that's going to be my strategy, by the way, it isn't. Not unless my mentor tells me to, anyway."

Alec tries to imagine Creed kissing half the Pack and snorts. "No, that's not what I meant. I meant — the part where he kissed boys and nobody cared."

Creed's gaze turns sharp and thoughtful, and Alec holds his breath on the exhale so it won't be obvious. "I wouldn't worry about that," he says. "Everybody goes through that phase in Residential, it's just because we're not supposed to fraternize with potential district partners. You must have noticed the trainers don't care, and they stamp out anything that's not okay."

It's funny, Alec almost expected Creed to make the same sour face Dad did when they talked about Devon's strategy, and he'd prepared for the awful, sinking feeling of his brother's judgement. But this, the airy dismissal, this almost sticks worse. "I'm not talking about the Residential phase," Alec says, curling his hands. "I know about that, and it's not — you didn't, did you?"

"Well, I did, sort of," Creed says, flashing Alec a wicked grin that will look great plastered across two-storey screens tomorrow. "For practice, anyway. Like I said, in case my mentor told me to. I couldn't be flopping around with no idea like an idiot." Alec gapes at him, and he laughs, finishing the last of his apple with a flourish. "It was all right," Creed continues with his mouth full, and that, at least, will not be making it into any televised scenes. "I don't think I'd do it for fun, though, girls are better."

Of course. Of course Creed did everything set out in front of him, even going through the Residential phase in the most obedient, approved and — most importantly — perfunctory fashion. Anger flashes in Alec's chest, and before he can reconsider he blurts out, "It's not a phase. I mean — not always. I mean, I don't want it to be."

Creed blinks as Alec's face burns, and for a second the Volunteer falls away and there's Alec's brother underneath, startled into confusion and out of his usual charm. "Well, that's all right, though," he says finally. "Twenty years is a long time, and then you'll be all right to do your duty after that."

The bubbling of worry inside Alec stops dead and sinks down, spreading through his chest and his limbs with an odd, final sort of heaviness. Twenty years of service is a long time, more time than Alec can even contemplate when he's still trying to make it through the Program day by day, and maybe Creed is right. Maybe after twenty years Alec will fix himself and the odd restlessness that drives him awake at night, maybe by then he will be ready to settle down with a girl — woman — and have kids like he's supposed to.

Meanwhile Creed will be in the Victor's Village doing whatever he wants — he could kiss all the boys if he wanted to and no one would say anything, though of course he won't — because those are the rules. Win the Games and you win the world, and it's right that glory follows sacrifice because that's what this country is built on except — except with Alec it will be backwards, won't it, every day counting down to everything he's managed to keep and will one day lose.

But this is the last night they have together, and Alec is not a child. "Who do you think your mentor is going to be?" he asks instead.

Creed grins. "I know, actually. It's Callista. They told me last week."

"Callista?" Alec says, and that was not the proper tone of reverence he's supposed to use when discussing a Victor, let alone The Butcher of 41, but — _Callista_. "Callista who cut that boy's heart out while she was — while they were —" Alec saw that footage once, when he and his friends spent their free time one evening watching highlight reels. For a week afterward he couldn't close his eyes without the images playing in his mind.

Creed laughs, though he does turn a bit red. "Well, she hates being copied — remember what she did to the girl from Nine whose stylist gave her the same hair? — so I don't think that's what she'll tell me to do."

"I hope not," Alec says, grinning back, and now he wishes Selene were here instead of off in the Senior dorms because she would have loved this. She'd cackle at the idea of a strait-laced Seward with Two's craziest mentor — _She has her own line of S &M clothing_, he hears her howling in his head, _Do you think she'll make you a mini-version to model?_ — and it's been a long time since Alec thought about her really but now missing her makes his chest ache.

He could try to make her jokes but they'd only come out awkward if he said them, so Alec settles for laughing and poking Creed in the ribs instead.

The more they talk the years fall away, and the various beads glittering on their wrists no longer represent months and years apart but links forged between them. Alec has killed the same as Creed has; he's jumped in the same frozen lake in January and learned to claw himself out before the shock set in. He'll never be a Volunteer, will never see the Arena or the glory of the Capitol, but they have this now, two boys and a handful of black leather strands and a pile of bodies between them. Whether Creed always beat Alec in their footraces hardly matters now.

Finally Creed leans back, reaches his arms over his head and stretches his triceps, gripping each elbow in turn. "I should sleep," he says with a small, apologetic smile. "I don't know how they expect me to, but —"

"No, I know." Alec swallows, and the urge rises to fling himself at his brother and hold on tight like he never let himself when they were children, but no. Creed isn't just his anymore; even as he sits there in his room, dressed in Centre-provided sleep clothes with his hair mussed and a fading training bruise on his cheek, Creed is somehow bigger, _more_ , his eyes going faraway as he looks at the clock ticking away the hours.

Instead Alec holds out one hand and presses the other in a fist over his heart. "Mountains and earth," Alec says. Creed smiles at him, regal and almost solemn and far above him like the golden eagles that swooped across their namesake mountains back home, and Alec can't leave it there. "Mutt-face," Alec adds recklessly, heart pounding a few beats.

Shock widens Creed's eyes for a split second, then he laughs, drops his fist from the formal farewell position and pulls Alec in for a hard embrace. "Mutt-breath," he shoots back, gripping Alec's shoulders and pressing a rare kiss to his hair.

Alec pulls away first so Creed doesn't have to be the one to do it, and this time he salutes properly. He takes one step back, and then another — it will be fine, the Arena is in a week but the Games will be over in a month and they'll see each other soon, they will — as the air around him seems to thicken, dragging him back. "Good hunting," Alec says finally, one hand on the door frame.

Creed grins, sharp and predatory. "Indeed," he says. "See you on the other side."

* * *

Creed goes down in a spray of blood, clutching his stomach and scrambling to hold everything inside as the faces of the dead tributes fade from the sky above. The boy from Seven stares at the sword in his hands, too big and too heavy and so awkward he only barely managed to swing it once except once is all he needed. Creed was hard asleep, exhausted after nearly three days of paranoid awareness, when the other boy stumbled onto his hiding spot; he'd dragged himself half-awake and was staggering to his feet with one hand groping for his machete when the blow struck.

Alec can't breathe.

"My goodness!" bursts out Caesar Flickerman, his cheerful voice jamming a knife in Alec's spine. "That certainly was an upset! Let's take a look at that again, shall we?"

The camera rolls back thirty seconds then spools out in slow motion, blood spattering the camera lens as Creed crumples and the lines of his strong, handsome face go slack. Alec's chest burns and his nails dig into his palms and around him the room full of tribute candidates has gone stone-silent.

"I think I jumped right out of my seat," Flickerman says. "Claudius, check my hair, will you? If I've gone white I'll have to make an appointment with my stylist, stat!"

One of the trainers lets out an irritated growl and hits a button on the remote, cutting the commentary audio. Without the breezy stage patter the sounds of the Arena come through the speakers twice as loud, Seven Boy's ragged breaths and Creed's tortured, wheezing gasps for air like the rasp of a steel file over bone.

It's a bad wound, ugly and jagged, and the numbers flash red in the corners indicating the severity of the injury and the likelihood of survival. Creed splays his hand over the red smear on his shirt, thrashes with his free hand until his fingers close around the hilt of his weapon. The movement jars Seven into taking a step back; Creed, his face fixed in a rictus of pain and determination, pushes himself to one knee and swings.

They're not close enough for Creed to make contact but it spooks Seven anyway, and the boy turns and runs rather than risking coming any closer for a finishing blow. His footfalls vanish into the distance as Creed sways but stays upright, balanced with one leg bent and the tip of his machete scraping against the concrete. He stays there for a few more seconds after silence descends — the second blip on the tracker in the corner of the screen disappears, indicating only one tribute in the area — then collapses again.

Any minute now, Alec thinks. There's not a sponsor gift out there that can fix this one.

Pressure builds in Alec's throat but he pushes it down, the sting of bile at the back of his throat. On his left, Kevin — still the smallest and the fastest, but now with an odd intensity in his eyes more often than not — shifts uncomfortably and mutters "shit" under his breath. Alec ignores him, all of his vision tunnelled toward the screen, skin prickling and ears strained, waiting for the cannon.

No cannon. The minutes stretch on and still no cannon; the main Games feed switches away from Creed to flick through the other tributes — Seven Boy running with awkward strides, the sword bumping against his back; the girl from Six darting out from her hiding place to find food; Angelique, from One, exhausted and thin-lipped but determined as she stalks the streets. The Two feed stays on Creed, nowhere else to go after Myrina died two days ago, and every time he exhales Alec thinks this time, this time — but then comes another gasping intake of breath, then another, as Creed's face pales and his eyes glaze over.

When they all trooped in this afternoon Alec caught sight of Selene a few rows up near the front, sprawled with her year-mates between a dark-haired boy and the redhead Alec recognized as Petra, her rival. Alec drags his gaze away from the screen and finds her now, sitting stock-still with her legs crossed and her back as ramrod-straight as Alec's. As the first hour passes and Creed still clings, Petra reaches over and takes her hand. Selene doesn't look at her or even move, but her grip tightens. They sit together, two girls whose hatred for each other is Residential legend, white-knuckled hands clasped as they watch Alec's brother die.

The main feed stays away; when they do flip over to Creed for an update it's in the background on the screen behind Caesar Flickerman and his commentators, and even they only make perfunctory marks and move on to the others. This won't be playing well with sponsors, this slow, lingering death of a Career tribute from the district where deaths are meant to be short, brutal and glorious. If Creed had been a torturer then they could at least play up the irony, but he'd been honourable: clean combat kills, no hamstringing and leaving them for later. They'd started calling him the Angel of Death after he'd put a starving girl out of her misery, and there's no way to spin this.

After three hours, the trainer gets up and stands in front of the screen. Alec lets out a sharp cry of protest that he stifles with a hand over his mouth, and the others in the room stir and shift. The room is emptier now than at the start, two thirteen-year-olds and one fourteen having been escorted out for crying, though one of the fourteens, a dark-haired girl half the size of everyone else, drags her gaze away from the blood with obvious reluctance. Her companion, a big boy in the year above, stretches and looks bored. They'll still be here tomorrow; the ones who cried, definitely not. Meanwhile Petra and Selene let go and cross their arms, never once looking at each other.

"Everyone out," the trainer says. "It's late. Get some sleep, we'll do an announcement if anything happens."

The others filter out but Alec stays, glued to the floor even when he tries to obey. The trainer gives him a sharp look. "That means you," she says, warning.

Felix, one of the boys in Alec's hear, lingers near the door. "Come on, Alec," he says kindly. He's one of the best in their year, nobody has ever managed to win a sparring match against him, but he's also the nicest of them and Alec wishes they could all forget the killing and just _go home_ — "I'll walk with you."

"No," Alec says. It takes him a few tries, his mouth dry and lips cracked when he tries to wet them, and the trainer thins her lips but Alec forces himself to be calm. Nobody ever got what they wanted at the Centre by bursting into tears. He bites back the instinctive 'please', never quite trained out of him despite years of trying. "I have to watch. He's my brother, I owe him that much."

Onscreen, Creed's eyelids flutter closed and he passes out again. Good. Maybe this time he won't wake up; every time the cameras catch his eyes rolling back and forth in panic Alec nearly screams.

The trainer taps one finger against her arm, then clicks her tongue. "You cry, you're going to bed," she says, and the words are harsh but Alec understands her meaning. If he's lost it enough to cry in front of people, here, then the emotional risk of sticking with it outweighs the benefits of passing the test. They're here to be broken, but not destroyed. He hates that he knows this.

"Yes sir," Alec says.

Felix disappears, then comes back a minute later with a pair of cushions stolen from the nearest common room couch. He hands one to Alec, who takes it on autopilot, and sits next to him without talking.

Felix isn't Selene — he's never pushed Creed into the lake and cracked up laughing when he surfaced, spitting water, with his hair in his eyes; he doesn't know that Creed's favourite colour is the deep blue of the sky just after the sun sets — but Alec can't ask her to be here. They don't talk anymore, and Selene is playing to win. She can't afford this kind of emotional distraction, and maybe it's better like this. Selene wouldn't cry, same as Alec, and the two of them pretending they're all right would be too much.

The trainer glances at Felix, opens her mouth as if to protest, then shakes her head and lets them be. She pulls up a chair near the door and sits down with a folder of paperwork braced on her knee, glancing up now and then to check on Alec or what's happening onscreen.

They watch, and nobody speaks. Once the trainer gets up and comes back with a cup of water, which she presses into Alec's hand before going back to her seat. He stares at it, unsure what he's supposed to do, but Felix covers Alec's hand with both of his and lifts the cup to his mouth. Muscle memory takes over when the water touches his lips, and Alec drinks, swallows, repeats like a good little Centre soldier until it's gone. Afterward he crumples the cup and tosses it into the garbage can across the room, where it falls in a long, perfect arc.

Alec pulls his legs to his chest, resting his chin on the top of his knees. Creed's eyes find the camera sometimes, unseeing and accidental, and each time Alec swallows a handful of sharp stones. The Hunger Games are about honour and glory and the beauty of sacrifice, but there's nothing beautiful here. It's just death, ugly and messy and agonizing, one rattling breath at a time.

After a while Alec's mind drifts away from the image and sounds onscreen, back down the mountain to the house he grew up in. His parents wanted this for Creed; they dedicated him to the Program as a baby, sent him to the Centre as soon as they would take him. They talked about the Games at dinner, encouraged Creed to build mock Arenas with blocks and household objects and strategize Career Pack tactics while arranging the vegetables on his plate.

Dad never talked about this part. It was always Creed the Victor ever since they were old enough to know the word. When Creed said he wanted to make wings out of bedsheets and jump off the roof and fly, Dad cautioned him that he'd only fall and break his arm. But when Creed drew up plans for his house in the Victors' Village and pranced around the yard with a stick as an imaginary sword, Dad never sat him down and reminded him of his odds. No one ever told Creed he should be realistic and prepare himself for the possibility of never coming home.

What is Dad thinking now? He and Mom didn't stay up all night watching the Games like the big parties in the Capitol that sometimes made it on TV, but Alec can't imagine him going to bed now and checking in on things in the morning. They're probably awake the same as Alec, sitting in the living room and not talking. Maybe Uncle Paul and Aunt Julia are there, too, or maybe they're at home at their house doing the same.

 _Sacrifice_ , Dad used to say with a solemn frown, _is not just for things we're willing to give up. If anything, the greater the love, the better the sacrifice._

Alec used to grit his teeth when Dad said stuff like that because it seemed easy enough to say, and what had Dad given up anyway? He'd wanted to be a Peacekeeper, he'd finished his active duty covered in commendations and married Mom and had the perfect son on the first try. It hadn't been a sacrifice to send Creed to the Centre, he'd been proud and happy the whole time. Alec had never caught his father crying over one of Creed's photos after he went into Residential, or making sad faces when Creed's birthday rolled around and he wasn't there to celebrate it.

But for all that, Alec can't imagine Dad watching this and brushing it off with a line about how he'd given his son willingly and so accepted his death the same way. He can't imagine what Dad is doing, either — he's never seen him cry, or break down, or show any kind of sorrow — but this is Creed, and Dad might have talked big about sacrifice and honourable death but Alec thinks he must have always secretly pictured Creed winning, too.

He definitely can't see Dad thinking it's all right because he still has one son left, but that's a horrible, stupid, selfish thought and Alec pinches his forearm with his fingernails to chase it away.

Alec glances over at Felix, who hasn't said a word or moved except to shift his balance now and then. People expected him to drop out after his first kill test but here he is with the Centre bracelet around his wrist, red, orange and silver beads glittering against the black strands. For the first time since Felix sat down, Alec breaks the silence. "Do you still want to do this?" he asks in a low voice so the trainer won't overhear. "After all this, every year, you still —"

Felix runs his fingers over the bracelet, still not looking away from Creed. "Volunteer?" he asks, and Alec doesn't answer but he nods anyway. "Yeah. I mean, of course."

The spark of anger that the trainers have been trying to tease out for years starts up in Alec's chest. "Even seeing stuff like this? What if this is you in two years?"

Felix looks at him, eyes serious and old and a little bit sad, the way Creed's did before he took the Residential exam. "If I don't volunteer it will be somebody else," he says. "Like you, or Kevin, or Grant. And if none of us, it would be someone who's not prepared." He turns back to Creed, whose vitals have plummeted almost to nothing but who's still alive, stubborn as always. "I'm willing to do that so someone else doesn't have to."

Creed said the same thing, back then. It's noble, probably, or honourable, or however many other of those words that speeches like Felix would get in training, but that's not the word that floats to the top of Alec's mind. That word is _stupid_ , and worse than that — a waste. A horrible, awful waste that Creed's entire life boils down to eleven years of training, three weeks in the Arena, one well-placed sword stroke and a night of taking too long to die. Potential and talent and charisma, none of that means anything in the end. The concrete doesn't care if it's Creed's blood or the blood of a tribute who never contributed anything to anyone. Either way, both of them never will again.

"I guess," Alec says finally, because he has to say something, and Felix squeezes his shoulder.

* * *

Against his will, Alec is drooping by the time the proximity alarm on the Two feed lets out a warning. He shakes himself and sits up straight, knuckling his eyes and pushing hands through his hair as the main feed shows the girl from Six converging on Creed's position. The District 2 feed pans out as she closes in, pulling away from Creed's waxen face to take in the entire scene.

She actually trips over him, not surprising in the dark and however long it's been since she had a good meal. For a horrible second Alec is convinced she's going to turn and run — she backs up, gasping in shock — but then she stops herself and inches closer, one hand clenched around her knife.

It's been so long — seven hours, Alec calculates blearily, though it takes him four tries to get it right even with the clock in the corner — and if she leaves Creed here then who knows how much longer it will be. Alec holds his breath as the girl kneels next to Creed's unresponsive body. She shifts awkwardly, trying to find the right angle as her hand shakes, but finally she positions himself by his shoulders. She mimes a practice strike above his neck, then another, and on the third she drops her hand and drags the blade across his throat.

Creed's breath stutters, and a few seconds later the cannon fires. The girl scrambles to her feet, sways for a second like she's about to be sick, then turns and runs. She doesn't bother with Creed's machete; she's wiry but small, and would likely fall over backwards trying to wield it. A few seconds later her footfalls fade and Creed is alone.

The trainer lets out a long breath — beside Alec, Felix doesn't move but his eyes pinch at the corners — and Alec tightens his arms around his knees because if he doesn't the ground is going to disappear and swallow him.

A low chime sounds over the Centre loudspeakers to mark the death for those not watching, and somewhere in the Senior wing Selene will have heard it whether she'd stayed awake or forced herself to sleep. Onscreen a hovercraft descends, claw-cage extended, and Alec watched Creed fight and he watched him die but he can't watch this, his body flopping loosely in the hovercraft's grip as his insides spill out, and Alec presses his hands over his eyes and takes harsh, shallow breaths that burn his lungs until Felix tells him it's done.

He looks up in time to see the hovercraft disappear before the Two feed flickers out.

Alec intends to be brave, to honour Creed's sacrifice with the proper reverence, but everything spins and his stomach rebels. On the main feed Flickerman is talking about _strategy_ and how the girl from Six has handily added one more to her tally and just might be a _contender,_ and the last thing Alec thinks before it all goes black is at least he didn't puke all over himself first.

* * *

The Games end in a showdown between the girl from Six and the boy from One with an upset that leaves the girl standing and the golden boy bleeding on the concrete, or so Alec hears later. He doesn't leave his room long enough to see any of it for himself, and the trainers don't come to fetch him for training or analysis sessions or anything. When his stomach finally protests too much to ignore Alec drags himself out to the cafeteria for a protein shake, but no one tries to get him to stay.

They don't even haul him out for the finale, and that's when Alec knows that whatever else happens, he's done here. Getting in trouble at the Centre is one thing, but when they don't even bother, that's when they've given up. He'll be out with his cardboard box of personal effects by the end of the week, once they have time to process the paperwork.

Felix comes to see Alec once, rapping softly at the door and calling through the crack, but Alec rolls over to face the wall and doesn't answer. He wraps the thin blanket around himself, fingers digging into the fabric, and there are no trainers here to watch him and no scores to match or anyone to care so it doesn't matter anymore, but while Alec's eyes burn they stay dry.

He tries, once, conjuring up every soppy childhood memory he can, all the promises the made in boyish earnestness that would never come true now, but all that does is make Alec's stomach churn at the selfishness of it. Creed is dead, and Alec wallowing and trying to feel sorry for himself won't make it any better. He might not believe all the talk about honour and nobility in death anymore, but ridiculous pantomimes of grief don't help, either.

Alec's anger at himself buoys him up enough to head out and take a shower hot enough to turn his skin bright pink, but when he tries to ride the wave and eat a proper lunch the food sits in his stomach like a bag of wet sand. He chokes down half a protein shake and returns to his room on shaking legs, and once back inside he does pushups until his arms collapse.

The day after that, the trainer who stayed with him and Felix shows up at Alec's room with the piece of paper that says he can go home. Alec saw it coming but it still hurts, less like a slap to the face and more like a muscle ache deep in his side. He gathers his things into the box without really paying attention, and he signs the release form after only a cursory scan.

It's not until the trainer holds out her hand for his bracelet that Alec balks. Like it or not, the bracelet has been part of his life since he was eight years old. Each strand represents how hard he fought to get it, throwing the first punch and reacting with aggression to things he'd much rather let slide. Even more than that, the bracelet gives meaning to everything he's done for the past eight years.

With the bracelet, Alec is a tribute trainee who followed orders and passed the tests the Centre threw at him. The red beads are an accomplishment, a rite of passage that binds him not just to the others in his year but to Selene and Creed, even while separated. It lets everyone in Residential know exactly what he's done and how hard he's worked; a boy sitting and staring at his meal without eating, turning the dull kitchen knife over and over in his hand, means nothing on its own, but a glance at the bracelet to see a new, shiny red bead tells the rest of the story. With the bracelet, every life taken at Alec's hand was part of a greater purpose.

Without it, Alec is a sixteen-year-old who wasted over half his life trying to become something that doesn't matter, trying to live up to a brother he'll now outlive instead. Without the bracelet the kill tests stop being tests and just start being kills, three people who died because Alec murdered them with nothing grander to make that fact less ugly.

"It's standard," the trainer says, almost gently, when Alec covers his wrist with his hand and holds his arm close to his chest. "No one gets to keep theirs except the ones who age out."

Slowly, fingers fumbling with the clasp, Alec unfastens the bracelet and lets it fall into the trainer's open hand. His wrist looks strange, bony and naked, a pale strip of skin beneath the head of his ulna. Alec immediately tugs the sleeve of his uniform down to cover it, releasing a slow breath once the fabric reaches the back of his hand.

As an afterthought Alec remembers his watch, the one Dad gave him on his seventh birthday. They don't wear watches in Residential but he'd brought it with him anyway, and Alec pulls it from the box and fastens it around his wrist, over the empty space. The links pinch his skin — he's filled out since he was thirteen — but it's better than nothing, and Alec breathes a little easier.

Neither of his parents made it to eighteen either; they were farmed out to the Peacekeeping track at sixteen, just like Alec would have been soon enough. At the end of the day all three of their wrists are bare; does it really matter that his parents tested out and Alec is being discharged for a breakdown?

(It says so on his paperwork: _honourable discharge: psychological, extenuating circumstance_. Not exactly something to frame on the refrigerator, but it beats failing a test, probably.)

"One more thing about your release," the trainer says as Alec reaches for his box. He stops, frowning. "The Centre runs a transition program for anyone coming out of Residential. You'd live in one of the dorms with other ex-trainees, with counsellors and tutors to get you ready for life outside."

Alec swallows, folds his left arm behind his back to stop himself from reaching for his wrist again. "Or?"

"There's also your parents," she says. "In most cases that's not an option, parents sign away their rights when you enter Residential and they're not equipped to deal with trainees who've made it as far as you have. But given your family's connection to the Program and the Corps, you're also cleared to go back with them. A lot of trainees from the high-level families choose that route."

Alec takes a step back until his calves hit the edge of the bed, and he falls heavily onto the hard mattress. He'd never really thought about what would happen after; joining the Peacekeepers was always the next step as soon as he was old enough to understand what it meant. "I thought I'd just go right to the Academy."

The trainer shakes her head. "No, nobody does, not straight away. There's a transition period for everyone. It's just up to you whether you'd like that better at the dorms or at home."

It's been three years since Alec said goodbye to his parents at the steps of the main Centre building, but that doesn't mean they've been absent. They've lived with him every day, judging his actions and weighing his successes and pushing him to be better at every step. But the Alec they remember isn't the one who left, and if Alec can't even decide if he likes who he's become, how can he expect his parents to?

Then again, the thought of living in a dormitory full of counsellors and washout ex-trainees who have no idea who Creed is, who've never met him or heard him laugh or watched him play a prank and then put on his best innocent face afterward — people whose strongest memories of Creed will be him bleeding out on camera — that thought makes Alec's stomach clench. He might not be able to cry over Creed's death but that doesn't mean he can close the book and put it away, either.

Dad and Mom will have lost their son; if nothing else, that grief is something they all share. For once, Alec and his parents have something more in common than the Program.

"I want to go home," Alec says. His voice cracks but it doesn't matter anymore; the paperwork is signed, and he doubts they'll go to the trouble of revising it now to add that he sounded like a baby. "I want my parents."

The trainer nods. "We'll make the calls tonight," she says. "Everything else will go through tomorrow. For now —" she gives him a look that's sympathetic but hard at the same time. "I'm not going to tell you to stay in your room, but don't upset the other trainees or you'll be removed. Understood?"

"Yes sir," Alec says. He thinks of the thirteens who were pulled out for crying, how many of them came back the next day at breakfast and how many found themselves at the detox dormitory instead. He has no desire to run through the halls screaming about Creed's death, demanding that the others wake up and realize that everything is futile. Like Felix said, if not them then someone else, and without tributes brave enough to volunteer, District 2 would be a cesspool of fear and uncertainty for everyone just like in the districts.

That doesn't mean he wants to find Felix and listen to his calm idealism, either, not when Alec can more readily imagine the boy with a sword in his gut than standing on stage wearing the victory crown. Really, there's only one person that Alec needs to see.

He finds her at the range, lined up square to the targets with the butt of a crossbow braced against her shoulder. The rest of the range is deserted — range weapons are never as popular, too far for the spray of blood and the rush of close combat — and Selene stands alone with a whole pile of bolts lined up beside her. Alec stands back by the door, noting the fierce economy of motion as she reloads and fires again and again until the targets bristle like victims at a firing range.

Four years apart means Alec can't read her anymore, and even as kids Selene often confused him more than he ever understood her, really. Still, he watches her as she shoots, and Selene always mastered every challenge with a deadly grace but now that characteristic smoothness stutters into choppy, almost furious gestures. She never misses — each shot hits its target dead-centre with a dull _thunk_ — but the longer she's there the less practiced her movements get until she's jamming the bolts into place with the same vehemence that she might knife an opponent.

Finally Selene fumbles the string when trying to notch it back into place, and it slices the underside of her fingers. She hisses and pulls back, sucking at the beads of blood and staring at the line of red across her hand with a dark expression. Alec steps away from the wall, letting his feet fall hard against the floor, and Selene whirls around to stare at him.

"Hey," Alec says. Selene eyes him warily, and Alec keeps his hands at his side and doesn't close the distance between them past ten feet. _Don't upset the other trainees_ , they said. "I'm out. I'm leaving tomorrow, I just — I didn't want to go without seeing you."

The words sound thin and pathetic, like slapping one of the colourful bandages Aunt Julia used to put on his knees over a gaping gut wound ( _Creed's hands pressed to his stomach, red red blood seeping between his fingers_ ) but what else is there? Selene's eyes narrow but she doesn't close herself off, and her hands twitch as she fights not to shove them in her pockets because that's her tell and Alec knows it as well as he knows his own.

Next year, likely as not it will be Selene standing on the Reaping stage, holding the hand of another brilliant, brutal boy and roaring at the crowd. She's good, she's always been good, and Selene might have watched Creed die the same as everyone else but she's never been one to let herself be held back by someone else's failure.

(Alec didn't stay for the trainers' recap of Creed's mistakes, but he's seen enough Games to hear the commentary anyway. Creed pushed himself too far, stayed awake too long instead of finding somewhere to hole up for catnaps throughout the day, and when he finally fell asleep he crashed too hard to wake up in time. Alec imagines Selene listening to the trainers, eyes sharp and face serious as she files that information away so that when it's her turn she won't go down like that. For every tribute who falls, the death analysis might seem tacky but it could also save a life.)

Alec fights to find the right words as they crowd his mind, and at the front of the pack are all the ways he could beg her not to stay, not to do this. Whatever happened to being a Peacekeeper like her father (the Centre happened, and Petra happened, and the trainers and razor competition and her own gut-deep stubbornness happened), and how is Alec supposed to go on alone knowing that this could be the last time he ever sees her?

Selene's frown deepens, and Alec calls on every inch of his training, digs down to the core of steel inside him that his father fought so hard to put there. The odds are never in their favour and the Centre fills their heads with lies but — but. It also means that if this is Selene's last year to live, she'll live it believing she's invincible, that she can overcome everything and win because she's the best of the best and soon everyone will know. If she dies then she dies, and filling her with doubt for the sake of his own peace of mind won't change that.

Alec straightens his shoulders. "Good luck," he says. If his district is built on a lie then it's at least a lie that lets them live without fear. "Kick Petra's ass, I know you will."

Selene doesn't smile, and Creed's ghost floats above them and makes the air heavy, but her mouth does quirk just a little. "You bet," she says. She swallows and picks at the hem of her shirt, just for a moment, before catching herself. "You, too. Good luck, I mean."

"Thanks," Alec says. He hugged Creed before he left but Selene is different, wilder and even more untamed than when they were younger. She wouldn't want him to, and anyway, touching her now — making this all real — would only break whatever control Alec has managed to keep. He gives her a wave, awkwardly formed as he stops himself from the traditional Two salute that would only make her scoff, then turns and does his best to outrun his doubts without tipping them off by taking off at full speed.


	6. Chapter 6

The next morning Alec doesn't bother to get breakfast. He waits in his room, lying on his bed and staring up at the ceiling, until the trainer comes to fetch him. His stomach rolls and rumbles, complaining against the emptiness, but when Alec imagines sitting down at the table and eating his usual bowl of plain oatmeal and side of apple chunks, everything turns to ash in his mind. Grabbing food at odd hours is one thing, but eating breakfast is something normal people do in their normal lives; once he eats breakfast, Creed being dead will become normal too.

(It is normal now, Alec isn't kidding himself. Creed's body is in a Capitol mortuary waiting for the trip home. But taking that first step himself is too much.)

He does get dressed, at least, so that when the trainer opens the door she doesn't have to wait for him. Alec picks up the box and tucks it under his arm, the sharp edge digging into his hip, and he follows her through the corridors. All the trainees are at morning exercises, and the empty halls ring with Alec's footsteps against the metal floor. They pass the main gym on the way out, ringing with shouts and the slaps of bare feet on wood as the trainees go through their calisthenics, but Alec keeps his eyes ahead and doesn't peek through the door to catch anyone's eye.

It's a long walk to the front door, and Alec can count the number of times he's gone through it in the past three years. Each cohort gets monthly leave to go into town, to buy treats with their pocket money and flash their bracelets for discounts from impressed shopkeepers, and many don't come back until after lights-out though Alec always did. He hasn't walked through the big front doors on his own since his parents dropped him off, and Alec hesitates in the entryway, clutching the box hard enough that the cardboard dents beneath his fingers.

Dad and Mom stand next to their car at the bottom of the steps, matching Alec's memories down to the lines around Dad's mouth that mean he's trying not to frown. For a second everything washes in hard — there's space, everywhere, as far as Alec looks, open ground and land all the way to the too-distant mountains, the sky above him far too high to touch even with the world's largest scaling rope — and Alec nearly chokes, nearly calls it all off and begs them to keep him here.

But no, the Centre — and Creed, and Selene — and everything with it is behind him. Whatever happens next, there's only one way to go. Even a tribute can't crawl back onto the platform and expect it to lower back into the ground.

"Thank you," Alec says to the trainer. The summer heat slaps him hard in the face as he leaves the Centre's climate-controlled interior, and Alec squints against the sun bouncing off the polished limestone steps as he heads down to his parents.

"Son," Dad says, pressing Alec's hand like an adult. He looks — smaller, somehow, though no less postured or fit, but then Alec looks straight ahead into Dad's eyes and realizes for the first time just how tall he's grown. As boys, people always commented on how much Creed looked like his father; maybe now Alec has finally hit that mark. He tries to catch their reflections in the car window but Dad moves to open the door.

"Welcome home," Mom says before slipping into the front seat.

Alec slides into the back, folding his legs to make room in a way he never had to at thirteen, and he closes his eyes and feels the lurch of the car moving into gear in his stomach. He can't watch the Centre disappear behind him, and so he leans his forehead against the window and doesn't open his eyes until the car stops.

"Take your things inside and get settled," Dad says. "We'll call you down for lunch."

For a minute Alec stands on his front step, clutching the box of possessions just as he did that day on the steps of the Centre, but Mom beckons him in and he follows. Through the front room, around to the hallway, up the stairs to his room, everything is the same from the paint on the walls to the placement of the furniture to —

Alec stops dead in the door to his room. It's his room still — there's his desk, and his dresser, and the bedside table where he fell out of bed and cracked his skull once — but only half of it. There's a single bed in the corner in place of the bunk bed he and Creed shared, and dark, unfaded patches of hardwood where Creed's desk and dresser used to sit. Alec pushes open the door to Creed's half of the closet but it's empty too.

In a surge of panic Alec squeezes into the closet and feels around with his fingertips, searching the wood on the inside until he finds it. Quick scores in the wood, indentations made with a pocket knife that Alec traces and reads as the relief presses his chest: 'Creed and Alec 59'. For a long, breathless moment he's back there, Creed squeezed in against his shoulder and giggling, both of them shushing each other as Alec gripped the penknife and Creed guided his hand.

He stays there, hand pressed to the clumsily-carved letters, until Mom calls him down for lunch. Alec braces himself for questions about the Centre, about Residential, about Creed or Selene or their training, but they don't ask and Alec's mouth goes dry when he tries to bring it up. In the end it's easier to eat in silence, letting his thoughts swarm around his head while his parents talk to each other in polite, even tones while never quite making eye contact.

The spot across the table from Alec draws his gaze even the chair removed, and Alec shouldn't but he can't help it. He's more used to the empty spot at the dinner table with two years of Creed in Residential, but it makes the memories come back in odd surges. Before Alec left for Residential there were six dried butter beans balanced precariously on the rim underneath the table from a meal over a decade ago when Creed didn't want to finish his vegetables. Their parents never found them and Creed and Alec vowed never to tell and to see how long they stayed there. Now he imagines crawling under the table right there to see whether the beans have remained, like the secret words hidden in his closet.

Alec doesn't look, even after the meal finishes and they all take their plates to the sink. Until Alec actually checks, until he sweeps his hand under the rim and feels nothing but dust and plain wood, he can tell himself that Creed's last mischief is still there, untouched even with everything else swept away.

"Why don't you go explore," Mom says, touching Alec's arm and startling him out of a daze. He's not sure how long he stood there, staring back at the table with his plate in his hands. "See what's changed. Dinner's the same time as always."

It beats heading back upstairs to sit in the room that both is and isn't his, and so Alec heads outside. He doesn't bother with his shoes, letting the grass prickle the soles of his feet as he takes the back path through the yard and into the woods. The air is still in the midsummer heat, the leaves above barely stirring in the faint breeze.

Once Creed and Alec buried a shoebox filled with silly knickknacks and letters to their future selves, intended to be dug up ten years later. They ended up giving in and opening it a week later, and while the spot in the garden has long grown over, Alec can still pinpoint it, behind the rosebush at the corner of the foundation.

Near to that is the tree where Selene pushed Alec and broke his arm; a short walk would take him to the stream where they used to play Arena, making water filtration systems out of old shirts and bowls; a little while after that, the clearing where Selene first showed Alec how to practice for their orange beads. To the north is the spot where he and Creed used to sit and talk whenever Alec felt discouraged by his failure to please Dad, and while the rope has long rotted away, the branch above him still holds grooves from the swing the two of them convinced Dad to hang years ago.

Alec stops, curling his toes into the ground and rocking back onto his heels unable to choose a direction. Memories of Creed and Selene follow him wherever he goes, whether it's the woods or the stream or the path to school, and Alec can't bear to look and see whether everything has changed, like his bedroom, or if it's all the same, waiting for two friends who will never come back.

He can't just stand there, not when Mom or Dad might look out the window and spot him frozen like an outlier on the platform after the gong fires, and so Alec chooses a direction without thinking and heads off. His feet carry him forward with no need for input from his brain, and Alec lets his mind turn off until he stops at his preprogrammed destination.

The Valent house stands proud and tall and welcoming all at once, with the porch Alec used to climb to get up to the lowest gable and up onto the roof, the drainpipe where he slipped and twisted his ankle, the ivy vines up the side that they nearly set on fire once while playing with a 'borrowed' flare. It looks exactly the same as it did when Alec left three years ago, the blue trim still freshly painted against the white siding and the front walk free of weeds and cracks.

Alec pushes open the front gate before his brain catches up with him, and he crosses to the door and raps his knuckles against the wood. Thirty long, terrifying seconds later, the front door opens and Alec looks down — _down_! — at Aunt Julia.

Aunt Julia and a little boy maybe two years old, with dark hair and bright blue eyes just like Selene, and Alec was raised to be polite and trained to keep a straight face with a broken rib but he can't help gaping.

The boy ducks his head into Aunt Julia's shoulder, and she strokes a comforting hand over his hair. "Alec," she says, stepping back, and the three years of distance are there in her voice but her smile hasn't changed. "Come on in, I'll get you something to drink."

Aunt Julia holds Selene's tiny doppelgänger against one hip as she pours Alec a glass of water. The boy stares at Alec as they sit down at the kitchen table, and Aunt Julia props him up in her lap and hands him a small cup of his own. "Kit," she says, leaning down to catch the boy's eye. "This is Alec. Alec, this is Kit. Do you want to say hi?"

Kit hesitates, pulling his cup closer, but then he gathers his courage and bursts out, "Hi!" before going back to staring.

Alec tears himself away. "Kit?" he asks. It's not a common name in Two, but then again, neither was Selene.

"Christopher," Aunt Julia says, her mouth quirking, and she runs her hand across Kit's hair again. "But that's hard to say."

Christopher is not a Centre name, too many syllables, and Kit most definitely isn't. Alec knows better to ask, but he can hear the _back off, he's ours_ in the boy's name as clearly as if they had tattooed it on his forehead. When the time comes, thirteen-year-old Kit will not be bringing home a piece of paper asking them to waive their parental rights. While no son of a Peacekeeper could get away with avoiding the Program permanently, Alec will be surprised if he stays long enough to touch a weapon.

"How old is he?" Alec asks, then stops, studies the boy with the bright, intelligent eyes, and smiles. "How old are you, Kit?"

"Two," Kit says, holding up the proper number of fingers and glancing up at Aunt Julia to check. He flicks his eyes back to Alec, considering, and that's his mother's measuring gaze that holds Alec still. "Alec like trains?"

"I do like trains," Alec says. The relief inside him wells up to the point of bursting; for the first time since Creed's Games he actually feels like talking, like he can speak instead of swallowing down whatever he wants to say, even if it's just talking about a toddler's hobbies. "But I've never been on one. What about you?"

"Yes!" Kit waves his hands, and Aunt Julia moves the cup out of the way. "Mama family far away. Big train. Very fast!"

Alec only met Aunt Julia's brother and his family once, a long time ago, and doesn't remember very much. Really, the only thing that's stuck is Selene thought the house full of grownups was boring and convinced Alec and Creed to help her hide everyone's shoes. "I'm jealous," Alec says, blinking back the memories. "What about toy trains? I used to have one."

Kit brightens, and he squirms until Aunt Julia lets him down. "I show you," he promises, and scampers out of the kitchen.

Aunt Julia watches him go, a soft, fond smile on her face. "He looks like —" Alec begins without thinking, but Aunt Julia's eyes tighten and a flash of pain crosses her face. "—both of you," he finishes as smoothly as he can. Inside he kicks himself; of course they'll know that their son looks like his absent sister. They don't need Alec pointing it out like a Games commentator.

"He does," she says, her tone neutral but guarded. "You're back. How are you?"

Alec lets out a long breath at the question, but Aunt Julia doesn't withdraw. He pushes his hands into his hair — he can, now, no cameras or trainers watching to check his reaction — and leans forward until his elbows hit the table. "He deserved better," Alec says in a low voice. He'd never dare say so in front of Dad, or the trainers, or any of the kids still in the Program, but this is Aunt Julia. If nothing else, he could always be honest here.

Her mouth thins. "I know," she says. It's a simple acknowledgement and she doesn't take it further, but even that lays a cooling balm against Alec's raw nerves. "Paul saw him off at the Justice Building."

"Did he?" Alec swipes a precautionary hand across his eyes, but his fingers come away dry. "I — good. I'm glad. Dad — hasn't said anything yet, about Creed. I don't know if he's going to. I don't know if I want him to."

Aunt Julia doesn't venture a prediction, but she does stand up to refill Alec's water glass. Right then Kit comes back, arms laden with wooden engines and cars, and Alec laughs and helps him place them on the table before they all fall everywhere. Kit scrambles up onto the chair, placing himself firmly on Alec's lap and connecting the cars together, having apparently decided to stop being shy. Alec lets him, listening to the chatter about which cars go in what sequence and obeying Kit's orders to move this one in front of that one. He doesn't bother trying to keep up, just sits and basks in the presence of so much _life._

It's not hard to imagine, with an empty house and Selene's ghost around every corner, why Aunt Julia and Uncle Paul would want to fill the silence. Alec and Aunt Julia don't talk much more after that — what is there to say that wouldn't be sticking fingers in a wound that's still gaping for both of them — and Alec lets Kit drag him around the house for a full tour of all his favourite toys and hiding places. By the time Aunt Julia asks if Alec wants to stay for dinner, it's been hours and Alec hasn't thought about Creed or Selene or the ache in his chest more than a handful of times.

"I should go back," Alec says, and the weight settles back on his shoulders at the thought of the silent dinner table and the scrape of forks against plates, but they're his parents and he owes them. Kit puts on an exaggerated pout, and Alec laughs and drops down to one knee. "I'll come back and play another time if you want me to," he says, and Kit beams.

"Kit, go put your trains away, Daddy's going to be home soon," Aunt Julia says, and Kit takes off. "You can come over any time you need, Alec."

Alec nods. "Thanks," he says. "I — I'm sorry, but I don't want to say anything wrong, does — does he know? About Selene."

Aunt Julia sucks in a sharp breath, but then she collects herself and shakes her head. "Not yet," she says. "Not until we know what to tell him."

Not until he has a Victor or a corpse for a sister. Alec swallows, and the pressure behind his eyes builds and builds and the rock in his throat blocks his air and everything feels loud and hollow at the same time —

"Alec," Aunt Julia says quietly, and pulls him in for an embrace.

He doesn't cry. Alec lets her hold him, bending down to rest his forehead against her shoulder, and he counts off ten seconds — ten seconds to forget about being brave and stoic and grieving with respect, ten seconds of Aunt Julia's steady fingers combing through his hair — before stepping back. "Thanks," he says again. He calls out goodbye to Kit, who darts back in to wave and demand a high five, and forces himself to head back out.

* * *

Creed's interment happens two days later. A call from the Program Head Office and they take a car out to the Field of Sacrifice, standing in a small huddle with both mentors as two pine boxes are lowered into the ground. It's the first time Alec has seen a Victor up close since Devon — Enobaria and Claudius have mostly stuck to themselves, no visits to see the trainees in Residential like some of their predecessors — but it feels wrong even to look at them for more than a glance.

They're the only family there. The girl goes into the ground with no one but her mentor to mourn her, away in another part of the field with her tribute-siblings, and Alec is here to bury his brother but he can't stop thinking about that girl. What must it have been like, standing in the Justice Building for an hour with no one coming to see her, waiting for the train and knowing that the only person who cared whether she walked out or not was the mentor assigned to bring her home? Did she think to herself that at least someone would show up if she died?

What kind of family doesn't even come to watch their dead daughter's funeral? The field is dotted with headstones behind the waving grasses and flowers, over one hundred dead teenagers sleeping beneath their feet. How many of them went into the ground without a second thought from the people who raised them for those first thirteen years?

Alec startles out of his reverie when he registers the handle of a shovel being pressed into his hands. There's a dark smattering of dirt on the top of Creed's coffin already, Dad and Mom standing off to the side, and — oh. Alec's throat tightens, and he digs the shovel into the ground and tips a scoop of soil along with the others. The dirt hits the wood in a scattered series of thumps, falling like clumps of hail on the shed roof the time Alec and Creed got caught in a summer storm.

He steps back and hands the shovel back to the waiting crew, eyes stinging.

There's no ceremony, no speeches. Callista drops a handful of seeds onto the soil once the workers fill in the hole, and she steps back and raises her fist to her chest. "Mountains and earth," she says, bowing once to the headstone and once to the mountains behind, and Alec and his parents follow her example. Standing here in simple clothing, her dark hair pulled back and warm golden skin free from the Capitol-levels of makeup, Callista looks less like the Butcher of 41 and more like a mother who lost another son.

She turns to them with a sharp, hawklike movement, and Alec nearly jumps. "His things are yours, if you want them," Callista says. "It's your right."

Dad lets out a slow breath, then shakes his head. "No. You're his mentor, the right is yours."

Callista nods, eyes narrowed in what Alec would guess to be a flash of respect if he dared, then waves her hand in a gesture that needs no words to signal the end of the conversation. Alec turns to follow Dad and Mom to the car, dried grass rustling against his ankles, when Callista stops him with a word. "You," she says, and Alec freezes. "The brother."

He swallows hard, and he should say 'yes' but the words choke back the way they have since leaving the Valents' house. Alec nods instead, and Callista holds out her hand. "For you," she says, and drops a circle of braided leather and glass beads into Alec's palm. "He asked that you have it."

Alec stares at the bracelet, amazed that something so small and light could weigh down his arm like a concrete brick. It's been scrubbed clean since the Arena but traces of blood still linger in the centre of the beads, clinging to the inside. His breath comes hard in his chest, and he has to do something, say thank you to the Victor who just gave him back a piece of his brother — walk away before Dad notices and comes back to see what's wrong — but he can't.

"He didn't talk about them," Callista says, looking past Alec over his shoulder. Her eyes flick back to him, dark and intent and watchful, and Alec's feet stay rooted to the ground. "He did talk about you. Your brother didn't fear death. He feared what would happen to you without him there to watch over you. I had to give him drugs to make him be quiet and go to sleep." She exhales hard through her nose, exasperated at the memory, and it's not funny but the ghost of a laugh escapes Alec as he closes his fingers over the bracelet and slips it into his pocket.

Callista steps forward and takes Alec's chin in her hand, fingers pressing hard into his jaw. "Your brother is dead," she says. It's not quite venom in her voice but it's close, pain drawing the lines around her eyes until her gaze bores through him. Alec sucks in a breath but she doesn't let go. " _You_ are not. Let's not waste it, shall we?"

She steps back, repeats the shooing gesture with her fingers and strides off to meet her fellow mentor on the other side of the field. Alec stays frozen for a few more heartbeats, then tears himself loose and all but runs for the car.

Dad watches him in the rear-view mirror all the way home, but he doesn't ask and Alec doesn't offer.

* * *

Alec can't sleep that night. Creed's bracelet sits under his pillow, tucked into the pillowcase away from anyone who might come looking, and Alec's mind has been spinning since they got home and he can't take it anymore. He flings off the covers and heads downstairs for a drink of water to ease the headache pounding in his skull, knuckling his sandy eyes and fighting back a loud yawn.

He makes it to the cupboard and has one hand at the edge when a soft sound from the living room stops him. This house and Dad's habit of appearing around corners taught Alec stealth years before the Centre did, and he creeps back through the kitchen and peers around the door without making a sound.

Dad sits on the edge of the couch, feet planted on the floor and elbows digging into his knees, holding a piece of paper in his hands. It's angled away from Alec so he can't read what's on it, but the pile next to Dad, half scattered across the couch cushion where movement from his hip knocked it over, that's visible enough. They're all drawings or letters from Creed, most of them from before he joined the Program based on the size and shape of his handwriting.

Most of them are family portraits, the four of them standing in front of the house, but Alec catches a glimpse of a few where Creed is taller than Dad and has a shiny sword and a crown on his head. His throat tightens, and Dad sets the paper in his hand aside — MY HERO: JOSEPH SEWARD printed carefully in block letters at the top — and fishes out an old photograph, the edges creased and worn.

Alec nearly gives himself away craning to see it, and when Dad's hand finally moves so the glare from the lamp no longer obscures the image, the memory punches Alec hard in the chest. It's the three of them — Creed, Alec and Selene — dressed up for the kids' costume party at the annual Peacekeeper gala. Selene and Alec are wearing white, with their fathers' belts looped twice around their waists and carved wooden guns strapped to their hips. Creed has a wooden sword covered with foil to make it shiny, and he's smeared brown paint to make Arena dirt on his face and grins as he loops one arm around Alec and Selene's shoulders. Alec looks uncertain and Selene vaguely mulish, resenting having to pose, and in Alec's fuzzy mind as soon as the camera shutter closed she writhed away and put her 'gun' to Creed's head to arrest him for unwanted hugging.

Dad presses both hands to his forehead, the photo crumpling in his grip, and the air feels thick like molasses but Alec tears himself away because he has no right to see this. His father is strong and brave and stoic, and he gave his son to the Hunger Games without reservation like any good parent and never questioned his duty, end of story. It's not Alec's place to sneak around corners and watch him break.

* * *

The next morning Alec still can't find the words, but he fills out the application to the Peacekeeping Academy that he'd been ignoring on his desk and leaves it on the breakfast table. With Creed gone it's up to Alec to be the son Dad wants; he owes his father that much.

* * *

"Uncle Joe!" Kit bursts out, tearing past Aunt Julia through the open door and scampering down the front walk. Dad laughs and drops down into a crouch, scooping the boy up into his arms. "Uncle Joe, present? I deserve it!"

"Do you now," Dad says with mock sternness, drawing his mouth into an exaggerated frown and raising one eyebrow. Kit giggles and claps his hands, squirming with suppressed laughter, and finally Dad grins and pokes him in the nose. "As it happens, I did bring you a present. What do you think it is?"

Kit goes through an increasingly ridiculous set of guesses as Alec stares, his brain spinning as he tries to process what's in front of him. The 'do you deserve it' game is familiar, forever burned into Alec's memory, but the rest of it — Dad swinging Kit into the air with a wide smile, Dad holding Kit upside-down like a monkey-mutt while the boy's face turns red and his laughter turns to hiccups, Dad teasing Kit about bringing him a real tiger-mutt from the Capitol — none of this matches with the imposing figure who frowned at Alec through his entire childhood.

Mom has already slipped past them and headed inside, but Alec stays behind, standing off to the side to watch. Dad sets Kit back down on the ground, then reaches into his pocket and holds out his fists for Kit to examine. "If you guess the right hand you can have it," Dad says, lowering himself to eye level. "If not, then I suppose I will keep this present all to myself." He hides both hands behind his back, and Kit dithers for a while, hopping from foot to foot with one finger in his mouth, before finally tapping Dad's left arm.

If that weren't enough to make Alec's head want to burst already, now Dad actually shifts the hidden item from his right hand to his left before moving his hands out front to show Kit. "Well done," Dad says, holding out a small, hand-carved train engine, as the echo in Alec's memory says _Better luck next time!_ "You have keen instincts. Now what do you say?"

Kit beams, showing off his small, perfect teeth. "I deserve it!" he proclaims, one hand on his hip, and he looks so much like Selene, proud and sassy and completely unafraid, that Alec takes a step back.

He's not the only one. Dad's face shadows for a moment, just a flicker like a wisp of cloud across the sun, but then he winks and drops the toy into Kit's waiting hand. "That you do," he says. "Come on, then, let's help set the table."

* * *

It's not just that night, either. They eat together with the Valents two or three times a week, even more than in the old days, and each time they come over Kit runs to Dad first. Dad doesn't bring him a present every time, and if not Kit pouts but forgets soon enough and drags him off to look at the latest construction project he's built in the family room out of wooden blocks.

That's not the weird part — Alec and Creed used to show Dad their projects when they were little — but the part where Dad kneels down and lets Kit explain and tells him he has a gift for architecture, that's weird. He doesn't point out where the foundation of Kit's block skyscraper is uneven so too much vibration in the floor will make it topple. He doesn't point out the traffic flow problem in the middle of the highway system.

He does give suggestions if Kit asks, and the praise is always specific and never over the top effusive or insincere, but even so. Alec sits on the couch with his feet curled under him and watches them, the way Kit scrambles up into Dad's lap the way Alec never did even at his age, and his insides twist with jealousy in a way that hasn't happened since he was ten.

It's ridiculous. Alec spent his entire childhood swallowing envy over Creed, the favouritism and how everything in life fell into place, and now what did that give him? Creed is dead and Alec has over a decade's worth of memories tainted sour by his own bitterness and resentment. He's not about to do the same thing to a toddler.

There could be a hundred reasons why Dad treats Kit differently. Kit isn't his son and the expectations are different, no Centre or Peacekeeping from an early age for this one, so no need for Dad to encourage that kind of attitude. Maybe it's Creed's death, maybe it was the three years with neither of his sons at home that made him miss having someone young around.

Alec isn't going to ask, that's for sure, and he isn't about to make the same mistake with Kit as he did with Creed, or even Selene. He and Kit are different people with different lives, and if Alec can't help wondering what it feels like to be a little boy who gets hugs whenever he asks for them — to be a boy who could _ask_ for hugs — that time is over and there's no point in getting weepy about it now.

It does mean that the words choke off at the Valents' house the way they do at home, unless he comes over to see Aunt Julia and Kit alone without anyone else around. If Aunt Julia notices that Alec sits through dinner without saying a word, she's apparently decided it's his business because other than a few pointed glances she doesn't comment.

Dad and Mom still haven't noticed, and at this point Alec is almost glad. He spends his days studying, working through the lessons he missed during his years at the Centre so he can get his schooling completed and join the Academy. He saves his words for when they matter, but as the weeks pass and Kit's chatter continues whether he gets a response or not, Alec speaks less and less.

When a full week goes by and Alec hasn't said anything once, it hardly even feels like a milestone. The next day Kit pulls a book about hovercrafts from the shelf and asks if Alec will read it to him, and Alec slings an arm around the boy's shoulders and sets the book across both their laps and breaks the streak of silence without fanfare. It's not like any of it matters.

* * *

The Victory Tour is over and the girl who killed Creed safely back in her district when Alec completes the education portion of his pre-Academy application. The next step is a psych evaluation, but after all his years in the Centre Alec knows how to answer questions the way they want to be answered. He's grown up steeped in Peacekeeper pride; he barely even needs to practice to get through the interview, and when the acceptance letter arrives a week later Alec isn't exactly surprised.

He's not disappointed either, not exactly. He'd thought maybe they would sense that he's parroting, but Alec has said the words for so many years that it hardly makes a difference how deeply he believes them. Dad lost one son and that leaves Alec, and the Sewards have been Peacekeepers since the Dark Days and beyond. Alec can't exactly turn his back on all of that just because he has misgivings, can he? Especially when he couldn't even put words to them with a pistol pointed at his skull.

The Academy is — fine. There's a lot of talk about reprogramming, training kids who've held weapons since the age of ten how to use them to subdue and deescalate rather than murder. Nothing but nightsticks and pistols on duty, no knives or swords or machetes or anything that the Centre gave them, and the trainers are patient with the kids who slip and accidentally go for the jugular and everything is fine.

Alec, at least, doesn't need the reprogramming, and he has plenty of practice playing the good soldier. For the first time he doesn't have to struggle to place high in the initial personality assessments, rating high on obedience and leadership ability without the added need for hyper-aggression and over-the-top violence. Nobody asks him to pick fights or break ribs when it's time to finish a fight; it's over when the other trainee gets pinned to the mat, fast and clean, and that's all there is to it.

It's fine except for the days when they learn techniques to use against an untrained opponent — though they don't use the word 'opponent' or 'target' here, instead it's 'assailant' or 'detainee' or 'dissenter' — the days when they hand the trainees a thin metal pole and show a diagram of where to hit to drop another person without causing permanent damage. Alec stares at the baton in his hand and thinks about using it against someone smaller, weaker, desperate from addiction or starvation or madness; imagines cracking it across their wrist, their knee, their kidneys.

Pain compliance, the trainers call it. Instead of killing blows and death strikes they talk about the continuum of use of force, but caution that spending too much time talking will likely result in more people being injured or worse. The best way to avoid a messy situation is to stop it from happening, they say, and so Alec learns five ways to choke without killing and where to place his foot to keep someone from standing.

His old classmate Payton is there — Payton who bounced back when Alec ground him into the floor but got cut for coming back from his first kill test laughing and insensible — and during their off time he talks big about getting a posting out in an outlying district and keeping the traitors in line. "They'd take over the country if we let them," he says, others nodding, and Alec tunes him out and goes back to loading the practice pistol.

(The pistols remind him of Selene, out in the woods with her father and their friends, laughing with the men and shooting cans from tree branches and beaming under their proud shouts. Selene's eyes glittering as she mis-aims and hits a squirrel on the leg instead of square, watching it writhe and squeal in the leaves until she notices Alec watching her and finishes it off. But training is training and no matter what memories clamour for attention, Alec doesn't miss a step.)

The trainers do talk about killing in plain language, at least. Odds are most officers stationed in Two won't ever have to fire a lethal shot, but those posted in Eleven or Eight or Six where dissent and crime run rampant compared to the rest of the country, they won't be so fortunate. It's not the same as the Arena, the trainers tell them; this isn't about an audience, or playing for the camera. It's about efficiency, cold and effective and impersonal. Over and done with fast before anyone else gets hurt, no games.

Hunting practice means Alec starts off one of the best shots in his class, and it's almost easier. Shooting is detached; it places him far away from the target in most cases, and unlike swinging a sword his body won't shudder from the blow. The recoil from a military pistol is nothing compared to the wrenched shoulder Alec nursed for three days after hacking through a man's neck with a shortsword.

(Decapitations looked so quick and easy on television. He'd thought it would be clean. Instead the blood flew in spatters and hit him on the face, and when he opened his mouth to cry out in shock he tasted it, hot and bitter and salty on his tongue. It had taken him six tries to get through while the body flailed and thrashed on the ground, and he nearly fainted but held his ground. The trainers passed him, giving him high marks for effort and showmanship, and afterward sat him down for pointers on how to make the stroke count the first time.)

After a few months they graduate from flat boards with painted silhouettes to human analogues, made with ballistic gelatine and plastic bones. Later they'll work on moving marks and speed drills, but today it's about getting used to a more human-shaped target. First in line, Alec lines up his shot, exhales halfway and fires, aiming for the T-zone made by the eyes and nose like the trainers told them.

The 'head' explodes in a mess of artificial bone and blood, sending chunks of gel flying. The skull spirals off the platform from the force of the shot, rolling onto the ground and coming to a stop near the trainer's foot, and the white backing board splatters dark red in a furious pattern like a camera freeze frame.

"Good," the trainer calls out. "Solid shot, but watch your stance. You're still shifting your weight at the last second. Next!"

Alec stands frozen for another second, but the girl behind him mutters "Move!" and he forces himself out of the way before the trainers notice.

That night he dreams of his kill tests, only they stare at him with bloody holes in their eye sockets or with portions of their skulls blown off and bits of brain showing through. Alec wakes with a gasp, clutching his chest with one hand and flinging away an imaginary pistol with the other, and rather than trying to go back to sleep he climbs up onto the roof and stares up at the stars. The sky hasn't changed since the times he and Creed and Selene used to do this, and if Alec closes his eyes and wishes hard enough then maybe they'll be there when he opens them.

Instead it's the empty roof, cold and hard with the shingles edged with frost, and Alec shivers alone until he can't take it anymore and crawls back inside.

* * *

Alec almost asks Uncle Paul once, what it felt like to shoot his first criminal and how different it felt to making his first kill at fourteen. If it was easier to push away the guilt without having to scrub the blood physically from his hands; if it had helped to know that whoever he'd fought was working against the general harmony and safety of the people.

But then Alec looks at Uncle Paul's cane, thinks of the dissenter from Four who put a harpoon through his thigh and ended his career in the field, and the question fades. It feels like a silly question, a whining one, and anyway Alec couldn't begin to articulate what he wants to hear in answer. That it's easier, that the weight of responsibility fades with time? That one day he will be able to put a bullet in a man's spine and another in his skull and go home to a hearty meal of rare-cooked meat without a second thought? And so the question sits inside Alec's chest until it withers just like all the others.

The Academy is pleased with his progress, at least; they send home reports each month, and Dad reads them with pleasure at the dinner table and often stops to clap Alec on the shoulder and give him a warm smile. It's the first time Alec can remember getting this much affection and approval, no Creed to steal his thunder with grander tales and no footnotes about Alec's lack of commitment to excessive violence to temper his black and white scores.

It's just that Dad's smiles come with the memories of shifting his grip on the nightstick to deliver a more debilitating blow, and Dad praising his marksmanship swirls together with dropping a classmate to the ground with three precise chest wounds during a rubber-bullet live drill. It's all mixed up and confusing and muddled, Dad's smile and the twisting in his gut, and trying to tease them apart is about as effective as separating dirt from water without ending up covered in mud.

Kit, at least, doesn't care about Alec's training scores, and unlike his sister he's never dragged Alec in for a game of Peacekeepers or Dark Days. Instead Alec amuses himself on his visits by helping Kit build taller towers, the boy sitting on his shoulders and demanding which blocks be passed up to him as their construction rises above both their heads.

One afternoon in spring Aunt Julia calls Alec into the kitchen. The town had been hit by a sudden thaw following the last storm of the winter, and Alec's boots are solid with slush and muck as he kicks them off and lines them up by the front door. Kit's boots and coat are missing, and Alec gives the empty spots a curious glance on his way past.

"Kit is with Ramon today," Aunt Julia says, interpreting Alec's look. "I wanted to talk to you."

Alec exhales slowly and takes the hot drink she hands him, warming his fingers against the ceramic mug. He settles down onto the kitchen chair, and Aunt Julia takes a seat on the adjacent side. "You haven't been talking," she says, and the sip that Alec had taken to cover that very silence goes down too fast and makes him cough. Aunt Julia waits until Alec settles, and through it all her dark-eyed gaze is serious and steadfast without being sharp or judgemental. "You talk with Kit, and sometimes with me, but for the most part —"

He sets down the mug, pushing it across the table with one finger. "Not much to say," Alec says, trying for nonchalant, but speaking the words out loud takes much more effort than he'd expected. The urge to pull back the words, to swallow them like usual, comes almost before he forms the sentence, and he has to push himself to make an actual sound.

"Alec," Aunt Julia says, soft and disappointed, only Alec has a lifetime of weathering other people's displeasure and she's not aiming it at him. "I'm not angry with you," she says a moment later, confirming his thoughts. "But I do wonder what you think you're doing."

This time an easy answer doesn't come to mind, and Alec spreads his hands instead. Aunt Julia waits, not impatient but not backing down, and Alec considers before finally adding, "My duty."

Aunt Julia's mouth thins. "Alec, I know we talk a lot about how duty isn't just for things that make us happy, but it's not only the things that make you unhappy, either. There are ways to do your part and still be happy with what you're doing."

He laughs before he can stop himself, a harsh sound that scrapes in his throat, and Alec takes another large sip to try to soften it. "That's not really a factor," he says. "I'm not hiding my secret dream to be an artisan or a bricklayer. It was always Peacekeeping."

"It's easy not to think about alternatives when you're never given the choice," Aunt Julia says. Alec stills, and she nods. "Being a Peacekeeper is a good job, and a good life," she continues. "It's a proud profession, and I'm sure you'd do it credit. But it is not the only way to serve your district. You wouldn't even be the first in your family to choose another path."

No, Alec has heard of distant cousins who became trainers or teachers or Centre administration, even politics — but they'd all had siblings who joined the force. Each branch of the family sends one Seward to the Academy every generation, and that tradition has not been broken in all the years since the first traitor war.

"Peacekeepers help people," Alec says. It's the thing he's clung to since joining the Academy, the thing he tries to remember whenever he closes his eyes and his darkened vision fills with blood and broken bones. "I like helping people."

"There are other ways to be a Peacekeeper, too," Aunt Julia counters. "Have you thought about becoming a field medic? I've known you a long time, Alec. I think you could have a talent for medicine."

It's been years since Alec hurt himself while playing and went inside to have Aunt Julia patch him up, but the memories stick. She always explained everything she did, from applying salve and bandages to stitching up a nasty cut above his eyebrow, telling him why head wounds bleed more and what makes bruises and why they hurt. Sometimes when Alec didn't want to go back outside and face the Peacekeeping Inquisition just yet he'd stayed behind and asked her questions, learning the proper way to wrap a bandage or tie a tourniquet. He'd found it soothing, even with the pain, and Aunt Julia's implacable demeanour even as she rinsed his blood from her hands and cleaned her instruments never failed to settle him.

He'd never once considered becoming a doctor himself — or had he? His memory stirs; there's a faint echo in this conversation, maybe they talked about it once when he was younger, but Alec can't quite grasp it. Alec blinks and sits back, and Aunt Julia's mouth quirks just a little in mild triumph. "It's something to consider," Aunt Julia tells him. "Not everything is guns and enforcement and patrols. The Corps needs doctors as much as it needs soldiers."

"I'll think about it," Alec says, and Aunt Julia smiles.

* * *

Alec looks it up at the Academy library later. Field medic is indeed a specialization that the Academy trains, but the more he looks into it, the more he recoils. Field medics aren't sent out throughout Two on routine assignments like the domestic Peacekeepers; they're brought with the heavy assault squads to handle injury in combat. Their jobs are to keep their soldiers alive during the fighting, and to do the same to anyone they're up against — at least, long enough for them to be taken in for questioning.

It might mean healing but it also means more death, and the more Alec imagines watching his comrades shoot and kill — when he pictures patching up a prisoner so they can be interrogated later — his blood chills.

Aunt Julia works at the central hospital in the emergency ward; she deals with heavy injuries and lots of blood, and more than once she's saved a person's life — or failed to do the same. She often gets called in at terrible hours, and she disappears with her supplies and comes back in the morning and sleeps until noon before going back for the afternoon shift. Once she got brought down south after a mining cave-in, and she hadn't talked about it but she'd come back silent and grave.

That night Selene crawled in Creed and Alec's window and told them she'd eavesdropped on her parents talking; there had been a man whose leg had come clean off and who died when Julia tried to sew him back up, and a woman whose head got half bashed in but managed to walk away from the operating table alive.

Blood and death and heavy decisions in both, and they might be made with a scalpel instead of the barrel of a gun but at the end of the day it's very much the same.

Alec tries not to think about it, afraid he'll chase the idea away if he puts too much pressure on the details. Instead he waits until the next time he and Aunt Julia can have some time alone, and when she nods and fetches him a mug of coffee it's all Alec can do not to burst.

"I don't want to be a field medic," Alec says. Aunt Julia frowns but he keeps going before she can ask. "It's — I don't want to be near fighting, or guns. I hate them and I hate combat and I don't want to leave the district. And I'd want to know that anyone I helped would be going home, not back out into the field or to jail or who knows where." It's the most he's spoken in one go in a long time, but now that he's started the words tumble over one another like the slide of gravel that warns of a rockslide.

Aunt Julia doesn't interrupt, only nods to let him know she's listening, and Alec sets down the mug and moves his hands away in case he manages to knock it over with over-enthusiastic gesticulating. "I want to help people," he says. "I want to save people. I want to make people's lives better. But not just soldiers or prisoners, I want — families, and kids, normal people. Do you think I could do that?"

"Not in the Corps," Aunt Julia says carefully. "The only official medical position is on the field. Academy-trained doctors also work at the Centre, sometimes, but —"

Alec winces. Yes, that would be kids, all right, but he can't imagine having to set a child's broken bone only to tell them to get back out there and keep fighting. Can't imagine writing notes on whether they cried or screamed or swore or sat through it bravely, so the trainers could issue a reprimand or a surprise helping of dessert.

"I didn't think so," Aunt Julia says lightly. Selene is still there — she'll be gearing up for volunteering in the summer, they'll be announcing the decision soon — but she doesn't let it shake her. "Those are your options if you stay with the service, but they're not the only ways to be a doctor. There are plenty of posts in towns all around the district, serving the families and people who live there. The stakes might not be as high — and the pay and prestige certainly isn't — but is an option." She studies him for a moment, eyes serious, then nods. "I think you could be good there, too."

"I want that," Alec says. He'd been a healthy kid for the most part and only vaguely recalls the doctor's office his parents took him to for medicine, but when he searches his memory he does find images of comforting, matter of fact voices and capable, soothing hands. Very much like Aunt Julia, in fact. "But I — do you think I could?"

"If you mean do I think you'd pass the training and be successful, then yes," Aunt Julia says, and Alec straightens up with pride even though it's silly. Her personal and decidedly biased judgement is not a selection committee, and she has no serious data to base that on. "I'm sure the Academy would write you a good recommendation, even. But if you're asking me what to tell your parents, I can't answer that."

Alec nods. It might not be the answer he wanted, but it is the one he expected. "But it's a good job?" he presses. "It's — respectable?"

"It is," Aunt Julia reassures him. "Like I said, you would not be attending a lot of high-profile galas, but no one would scoff at a doctor. It's a fine career path."

Alec grins — actually grins, his cheeks aching after a few seconds at the unfamiliar sensation — and he darts up from his chair and kisses her on the cheek. Aunt Julia laughs and pats him on the shoulder mock-condescendingly, then shoos him off to find Kit.

* * *

What to do next Alec has no idea, but as it turns out, he doesn't have to. The next time they're over for dinner, Aunt Julia pulls him aside right when he and his parents are leaving and hands him an envelope. "It's an application for medical training," she says quietly. "There's no deadline, they accept new students every month. Look it over, see what you think."

Alec slips the envelope under his shirt and tucks it in his waistband. Aunt Julia tugs at his hem, pulling it straight where it got caught in his belt, and gives him a conspiratorial wink. It's all Alec can do to keep another ridiculous grin from taking over his face on the walk home.


	7. Chapter 7

Alec's first major breach of rules at the Centre had been sneaking out to see Creed. At the Academy, it's breaking into the director's office to obtain a copy of his file so he can attach it along with his application. He could ask, but there's no way to guarantee that it won't get back to Dad, and Alec wants to be sure. Dad isn't going to like it, the first Seward to break with tradition for generations, but if Alec has a guaranteed acceptance then it might be easier to swallow.

"Better to ask forgiveness than permission," Selene used to say, and that had been a common maxim at the Centre. There the trainee wisdom had held that if doing the thing was worth whatever punishment the trainers would assign for it, then may as well. Alec never subscribed to that particular theory, but now it fills him with an almost giddy glee.

Dad would say no if Alec asked, but even he must respect doctors. When he sees how hard Alec has worked, even behind his back, he'll have to understand.

Being an alumnus of the Centre means Alec is his own legal responsibility even without having passed Reaping age, and he seals the application and drops it in the mail all on his own without requiring a guardian's signature. That night he has to slip out of bed and go for a run just to calm his jitters, and after he climbs into bed, individual muscles jumping in protest and brain spinning despite the physical exertion, Alec closes his eyes and pictures the first acceptance letter that doesn't fill him with creeping dread.

He doesn't dare tell Aunt Julia on the odds that it will jinx it, even though jinxes are a superstition that Dad says belong to the quarry and have no place in a modern home. The hope buoys Alec through the next two weeks of training, even as they learn holds that break the wrist or the arm and start moving away from techniques to subdue larger, armed opponents and onto smaller, unarmed ones. Soon he won't have to do this anymore; soon Alec will stop having to cram his head full of different ways to hurt people and start learning ones that heal.

It's a perfect plan, until the day Alec comes home to see Dad sitting at the table with an envelope and a piece of white paper laid out in front of him. "Alec," Dad says evenly, and Alec's hand automatically tightens to stop himself from dropping his bag. "Would you care to explain what this is?"

Alec might not have been good at juvenile delinquency as Selene, but he knows better than to offer up an excuse or apology before he's sure. Instead he crosses the room and picks up the paper, taking in the official letterhead of the District 2 Medical Centre and the words 'Congratulations and welcome'.

Pride and elation swell up inside him, but the look on Dad's face douses them cold. It's the face he made the only time he ever laid a hand to Alec as a boy, the day he sent him out back to cut a green shoot from the tree in the backyard and soak it in water before handing it over. The soles of Alec's feet twinge in memory, and Alec swallows.

"I don't want to be a Peacekeeper," he says. "I want to be a doctor."

They're the first words Alec has spoken inside his house in eight months, and they may as well have caved the roof in.

"I see," Dad says, his expression still frozen hard and deceptively neutral. "When were you going to tell me of this? Or were you hoping I would just not notice that my son switched careers without ever consulting his parents?"

Alec bites down on his tongue to stop from wetting his lips. "I wanted to make sure I got in," he says, grasping for the certainty that had held him when he mailed the application. It made so much sense before, but it melts beneath Dad's level gaze. "If I didn't, it — I didn't want to waste anyone's time."

"Don't lie to me." Dad doesn't yell, doesn't slap the table or even raise his voice at all, but Alec flinches back anyway. "If you actually thought you were acting honourably, you wouldn't have sneaked around like this. You would have come to talk to me like a man."

Alec opens his mouth, shuts it, and tries again. "I wanted to!" he says. His voice scales up, sounding like a little boy's, and it's as though the years between him now and the frightened boy who jumped whenever he heard footsteps are like layers of clothing, slowly peeling away one by one. "I wanted to, I did, I just — I didn't know how to say it."

"I thought you were happy being a Peacekeeper," Dad says. His fingers tighten against the tabletop, knuckles turning white. "It's what you've wanted since you were a little boy."

"No, Dad, it's what you wanted!" The words tear themselves loose before Alec can stop them, but it's too late now. There's no sticking a scab back on once it's been pulled away. "I never wanted the Program or the Academy, I just — you never listened!"

Dad jerks back, a minute movement that scarcely puts an extra inch between them, but he may as well have staggered back from a physical blow. Alec nearly babbles apologies but grits his teeth and swallows them down. "I see," Dad says again, though not quite so icy calm this time. "And I've just forgotten all the conversations we had about this, did we? All the times you came to me and explained how you feel and we discussed things like adults, those have all slipped my mind?"

Alec winces. "No, I —"

"You don't talk to me," Dad says. "You've never talked to me, not like your brother did. And now you're punishing me for failing to have a conversation I never knew you wanted —"

"No!" The ground is giving way beneath him, and Alec flounders to stay steady. "No, it's not — I didn't know what I wanted, Dad, and so I just kept trying, but it wasn't right. It wasn't me, but I didn't know what was, so I didn't think there was anything else to do. And — and now I do."

Dad nods, but it has the air of an Arena cannon rather than an offer of reconciliation. "Is there anything else you would like to tell me?" he asks. "Any other important life decisions I have been cruelly forcing you into against your consent?"

It would be suicide to answer, as good as a skinny outlier tribute taking off for the cornucopia because their panic says _move_ and they don't have the brains to direct their legs where. But each year the first five minutes are a bloodbath no matter how many mentors must advise their tributes to run away, and so Alec speaks.

"I don't like girls," Alec says. Not that he's had much opportunity to find out what he does like, but what clandestine experiments he has managed have been enough. His face burns under Dad's impassive stare, but he keeps going. "I don't want to marry a girl and have kids someday. I still — I think — I want to get married and have kids, but not with a girl. People can do that if they want, if they're not Peacekeepers. One of my friends at the Centre, he had two moms. They adopted him from one of the children's homes. I want do to that."

Five seconds of eternity later, Dad finally answers. "So not only are you refusing to follow the family path, you're refusing your duty to this family altogether. You're the only Seward left, Alec, what happens to us if you have no son to pass on our name?"

"If I adopted I would give them our name," Alec says, and this time Dad actually reels backward but he presses on. "It's not just blood that makes a family. We're not related to the Valents but Selene and Kit still called you Uncle Joe. I'd still be a Seward, and I'd want my kids to be too. Just — not like you thought, maybe, but I'm still your son."

Dad lets out a long exhale, and he moves to brace his hands flat on the edge of the table. "If you do this," he says in a low voice, and for the first time something cracks underneath before he pushes past it. "Then no, you aren't."

"What?" The air leaves Alec's lungs in a whoosh, and he staggers and has to brace himself with one hand against a chair. "What, for becoming a doctor and not liking girls? You're going to disown me over _that_?"

"If my son has lied to me all his life and never trusted me with the truth, if my son thinks that his secrets are too good to share with his father, if he thinks it's more honourable to go behind my back and try to manipulate me, then what sort of son is that?" Dad pushes back his chair and stands up. His face has gone pale, but a slow flush creeps up from his neckline. Alec can't move. "If all this is true then I didn't have a son. Instead I had a liar who lived in my house and ate my food and availed himself of every advantage I gave him and then flung it back in my face. So yes, Alec, if this is your choice then I want you to know exactly what you're choosing."

For years the Centre tried to help Alec find his rage, to dig deep inside himself until he hit that well of anger that would let him override his better instincts and his doubts and the little voice that said _maybe we shouldn't,_ with little success. Alec couldn't even describe what rage felt like, not like Selene who snapped and screamed and shoved at the slightest provocation once the Centre gave her permission. He half suspected he wouldn't even know if it happened.

Until now.

It boils up deep inside him, starting in his gut and spreading to his chest, crushing his insides and squeezing his lungs, but instead of fear or panic that paralyzed and held him frozen, the anger fans him, feeds him. "If a father only wants his son if he plays by his rules and fits his mould and follows in his perfect footsteps then what kind of father is that?" Alec shoots back. "You didn't have a son, you had an imaginary one and you never cared to see if he was real. You don't love me, you never loved me. You loved someone who didn't exist. And I — I deserve better!"

Dad's hand actually flies up, and Alec has spent years training to fight and recognizes a blow when he sees one but he holds himself still. Let it land, let Dad strike him right across the face and see how that feels. But Dad catches himself, drops his hand to his side, and takes a ragged breath. "Get out," Dad growls. "Right now. Get out of my house."

Alec snatches up the paper and shoves it haphazardly back into the envelope, the bottom edge crumpling but who cares. He pushes past Dad and runs up the stairs to his room, and he grabs Creed's bracelet from inside his pillowcase and slides it over his wrist. For a second he looks around the room, trying to gauge what he should take with him, but no. No, the loop of leather and glass around his arm is all that matters.

He stops when the light from the window catches the glass face of his wristwatch. Alec has worn it every day since he was seven, barring those three years in Residential. After leaving the Centre he bought extra links so the band fits, and he hasn't removed it since. It's been a symbol of Dad's pride and faith in him for almost a decade, and some days it fills Alec with encouragement and other days each ticking second may as well be the Arena's countdown clock but it's always part of him. Alec slides his finger under the strap and pulls the clasp loose, starts to pull it off, but he freezes as soon as it leaves his wrist.

Alec holds the watch in his hand and stares at it, but finally he slides it back over his hand and fastens it again. Call it weakness, or sentiment, but Alec can't leave it here.

Dad is still there when Alec comes back down. When Selene was a little girl she threatened to run away whenever Aunt Julia told her to clean her room, and Uncle Paul pretended to take it seriously and told her how much he'd miss her until she changed her mind. It's a stupid thought for a stupid boy, and when Dad says nothing as Alec heads for the door and picks up his bag, Alec can't find it in himself to be surprised.

Surprised, no, but angry — yes, anger finds him. Alec holds up his arm, letting Dad see the bracelet, and his father's eyes go wide and startled. And good! Let Dad be the one left reeling for once, let him know how it feels to be hurt and betrayed. "Creed's mentor said he didn't talk about you at all," Alec says. The words twist ugly in his chest but it feels good, too, and for that moment he understands Selene in every one of her dark rages. "He talked about _me_. So maybe you never knew him, either."

He turns and storms out, slamming the door behind him, and Dad doesn't call out or come after him. Alec slings his bag over his shoulders and breaks into a run.

* * *

At first Alec heads toward the road, but soon he takes a sharp detour and ends up at the Valents' house. Aunt Julia answers the door, and after one look at Alec's face she takes a step back. "Alec, what happened?"

"I got in," Alec says, a spike of pride running through him even with everything else. "I got the letter today. And I told Dad and he said I can't be a doctor and his son at the same time, but I can't be a Peacekeeper and myself at the same time and I choose me. So I'm leaving, but I wanted to tell you first." He pushes a hand through his hair, jittering and edgy and eager to be gone, but Aunt Julia's shocked face holds him here, at least for now. "You believed in me. You were always good to me. Whatever happened, I knew that you would love me and accept me, and that's — that means a lot."

Aunt Julia stares at him. "Alec," she says. "Are you sure? What did he say —"

"It doesn't matter what he said," Alec snaps, and Aunt Julia's nostrils flare but she doesn't flinch. "He doesn't want me as his son unless I do everything he says, and if that's what he wants then I don't think I want him as a father."

Her eyes flick downward, and she catches the bracelet on Alec's wrist and lets out a sharp breath. "Alec," she says again. "I'm just going to ask you one more time. Are you sure?"

Alec almost laughs. He's walking on a thin, crackling layer of ice with a raging river underneath, and the ice might not be safe but it's better than falling through. If he turns back now he will, he can't cross the same path twice, and Alec doesn't trust himself to make it back to shore. "Please," he says, running a trembling hand over his face. "Please don't ask me to stay, because if you ask me to stay then I will. And if I do —"

Aunt Julia swallows, and without another word she pulls him in for a hug. "I understand," she says. "Wait here." She disappears into the house, comes back a moment later with a folded paper bag she presses into his hands. "We keep it for emergencies," she explains, and Alec tries to jerk back but she holds him firm. "No, listen, you'll get a stipend while you're in training but you'll need to find somewhere to stay and food to eat and everything else." She presses her lips together and holds him with a stare that reaches into Alec's chest and yanks his heart free. "I didn't help you before, not the way I should have. Let me help you now."

Alec takes the money and slips it into his pack. His eyes prickle but stay dry, and this time he's the one who wraps his arms around her shoulders. "Thank you," he says. "I — I can't come back, but I'll write. I promise."

"Good," Aunt Julia says, leaning back and tapping him on the chest with one finger. "Because Kit will be asking about you, and I'll never hear the end of his questions if you don't." She gives him a smile, and Alec almost takes it back right there because she lost Creed and she's going to lose Selene and now she's losing him, but he has to do this and she understands. Of all of them, Aunt Julia is the only one who ever understands. "Mountains and earth, Alec. I'm proud of you."

Alec touches his fist to his chest, then turns and walks away.

* * *

Alec makes the trip to the main Reaping square on his own that summer for the first time in his life. At twelve, his first eligible year, he'd gone to the square in the company of his parents, and they'd spent the trip in sombre, respectful silence to honour the upcoming sacrifices who would now step in for Alec if his name were called. Selene and Creed had already been in Residential, and they stood in clusters with the others in their year while Alec joined the youngest at the front. He'd strained to catch a glimpse but the crowds stood between them, and afterward the Centre kids headed back and Alec found his parents without any of them spotting each other.

The next year, and the years after that, Alec joined his fellow classmates in the Residential group, all of them standing at attention with one hand clasped around their wrists. It had been different, then; for the first time Alec drank in every detail of the ceremony with an almost panicked focus, knowing that after they got back to the Centre they would be quizzed for details.

This year — no parents, no Centre, no Academy, no one prodding him awake at dawn — Alec almost misses it. The day is ingrained in his mind the same as it is is in everyone else's, but Alec is halfway through dressing and getting ready before it hits him that he still has to stand in the square. He's not yet through his Reaping years, still a child by Two reckoning, and yet when Alec thinks about everything that's happened to him it feels almost absurd. He's at least five years older than he was last summer, he swears it; the Alec who stood next to his classmates and fought not to squirm in the oppressive heat is a little boy long dead.

But rules are rules, and Alec heads into town with everyone else. The pale strip of skin where his bracelet used to sit feels like a flashing sign even with his watch to cover it, and every time Alec passes someone he expects them to zero in on it and demand to know why he didn't make it. No one does; this is Reaping Day, and whether people have sons or daughters in the lottery or not, everyone has their own thoughts to occupy them. No one has time to gawk at a teenager's wrist.

It's strange making the trip by himself, stranger still to start to walk toward the area where the other Centre kids stand before forcing himself into the middle with the other civilians. Alec gives his name to the bored woman sitting with the roster, and he waits for her to challenge him and demand to drop the surname that's been taken from him but she doesn't. She only nods, pricks his finger and gestures him away.

His parents will be here, somewhere, and Aunt Julia and Uncle Paul as well. There's no official mandate for his mother and father to be here, not when Creed has done his duty and Alec failed his, but he would bet every bit of money Aunt Julia gave him that they'll be here to support Selene.

It's her year this year, and it's been five years since District 2 pulled in a Victor and maybe that will be enough to save her. Maybe Creed's death, messy and disturbing and embarrassing, maybe that will be the price that will let Selene come home. It's not a trade Alec would ever want to make, but if Creed had lived this year then it's absolutely out of the question for Selene to be the Victor, too. It's been thirty years since Two managed back-to-back Victors, and the only ones who've done it since were the siblings from One a decade back.

If Selene makes it home, it won't be worth Creed's death but it might at least make it feel less pointless. If she doesn't —

Alec stomps down on that thought, hard, and digs his fingernails into his palms until it stings. Whatever happens, Alec isn't going to sleep much for the next month but he certainly isn't going to start digging her grave before she even steps on stage. The more pressing question is whether Alec would be allowed to see her in the Justice Building. The Centre can't forbid him as a graduate, and he might not be family but that's not against the rules either. As far as he can tell there's no precedent to keep him out, not anymore.

Then again, whether Selene would want to see him, that's something else. He last saw her the day he dropped out, and from now on whatever happens their lives will diverge even further. Victors aren't forbidden to see friends from their childhood, but why would they want to? What would they have in common with someone who hasn't seen what they did?

It's not hard to realize that Alec will spend the rest of his life regretting it if he doesn't go to see her, but this isn't about him and his comfort, it's about Selene. Once the ceremony is complete, he won't have much time to decide whether it would help or hurt her for them to talk one last time.

This year, Alec can't focus on the ceremony. He spends most of the speeches in a haze, thinking about Creed in the crowd last year, twitching with anticipation and the need to keep it off his face, and now Selene, standing with her classmates and knowing that this is the last time she'll ever have to see them. It's too bad they're not allowed to talk about the Program or any of their training, otherwise he bets Selene would use every opportunity to slam Petra for losing, but maybe she'll reinvent her rival as a jealous classmate or playground opponent.

The thought makes Alec smile, just a little, though he wipes it away before any of the roving cameras catch him. There are no trainers to scold him or make him run laps for it, but if he happens to make the broadcast and Dad and Mom see it tonight, no way in all twelve districts is Alec going to be grinning like an idiot.

They call the male tribute first this year, and this year's Volunteer is a big, dark boy who lumbers up the stairs and glares out at the crowd. Alec doesn't need a trainer to point out that he's downplaying his speed, that he might look heavy and slow but he's probably the second or third-fastest sprinter in his class. He'll save the speed for when he needs it and the cameras will love him for it, but for all his skill and size he's just another obstacle between Selene and victory and Alec pushes him aside.

Next up, the girls. The girl who's reaped looks about fourteen, long blonde hair plaited back from her face and tied with ribbons. The escort puts out the call for volunteers, and Alec holds his breath and shifts his stance to plant his feet more firmly and doesn't look around no matter how much he wants to —

It's not Selene.

For a second Alec thinks he's misheard, or that maybe Selene's voice has changed since he saw her last, but when the crowd parts and the cameras project the female Volunteer onto the giant screens, it's not Selene who takes her first step toward the stage. Instead it's a girl half a head shorter with hair the colour of a flaming sunset, and the gold bead flashes on her wrist as she lowers her hand and strides forward.

It's Petra.

The cameras do catch Selene, just for a second, standing in the back with her classmates and a hard, unreadable expression on her face before her eyes flicker to the screen and she forces herself to feign excitement. Then the view switches back to Petra as she saunters up and stands beside her enormous district partner, her head barely coming to his shoulder. She tosses her head and gives the escort a perfect, arrogant smile and announces her name like she just did everyone an honour letting them hear it and it's not Selene, it's not Selene _it's not Selene —_

The rest of the ceremony could involve dancing monkey muttations and Alec would not have noticed. Petra and her partner disappear into the Justice Building, their mentors behind them, and the crowd slowly disperses. Alec tries to dash back toward the Centre kids but it's too late, the trainers have already whisked them away. He stands there at the edge of the square, listening to a little boy negotiating with his mother over whether they can get ice cream on the way home, until a uniformed Peacekeeper wanders over and politely reminds Alec to get a move on.

"If that's a friend in there you can go wait outside the Justice Building," the man says, not unkindly. "If not, you'd better run on home."

"Yes sir," Alec says. He casts one last look in the direction of the Centre and tries to imagine what's running through Selene's mind before he gives up and heads back to his apartment.

* * *

Alec's shoebox apartment doesn't have a television, but the common room at the first floor does. On the first day of the Games he heads down and curls up in a corner of the couch, ignoring the others as they pass bottles of beer back and forth and make predictions about the outcome of the bloodbath. That stops when the cameras cut to the Arena — a dry, sandblasted hellscape — and the cornucopia, filled to the brim with nothing but maces.

"Shit," mutters one of them, and Alec swallows hard. They'd trained him mostly on spears because it gave him distance, better than the up-close slashes and stabs with swords or knives. Maces and flails and morning stars are even worse, no distance when each blow caves in bone and the weapon has to be pried out of whatever's left.

He doesn't have to have been in Petra's year to know that it's not her weapon, and it wouldn't be Selene's either. Alec releases a long breath and a prayer of thanks that it's not his childhood friend in that Arena, staring certain death in the face. Not that Petra shows it, her expression hard and determined as she rakes her gaze over the field, and Alec has no doubts that Selene would have managed just as well. It's not going to stop him from being glad it isn't her.

After the bloodbath ends and the initial cannon fires, Alec shivers and looks away while the Pack moves away so the hovercrafts can collect the bodies. It will be a long day before anything interesting happens, and usually at the Centre the trainers would let them stop watching through afternoon exercises until the recap in the evening. Here —

Here there are no trainers, and no reason to sit through anything but the mandatory evening broadcast. The television has to stay on but there's no one here to make him watch, and Alec owes Petra his attention because she's here instead of his friend but that doesn't mean he has to see everything. The freedom is dizzying, and Alec pushes himself up off the couch and heads out and no one stops him. No one even questions; the others' attention waned once the last of the outliers fled or dropped dead, and Alec gets all the way back to his room without anyone saying a word.

The Games are — interesting. That first night the girl from One grabs Petra and pulls her in for a long, messy kiss. Alec blushes and sits on his hands so he doesn't cover his eyes like a ten-year-old, but even worse, it doesn't stop there. The broadcast is cut for family viewing — all of the violence, less of the sex — so it doesn't show everything, but it sure shows enough. Alec finally closes his eyes and waits for it to end, and he can't help wondering what Selene is thinking watching this.

That night Alec tries to sleep but he can't stop wondering about Selene, alone in her room in the ex-Program detox dormitories, and what she's feeling. Whether she's calm, or furious, or numb; whether she laughed at her rival turning the Games into a sex show or whether she's spitting nails. Would she be analyzing Petra's every move and comparing it to what she would have done, or is she content to let the tribute play her game without ruthless self-commentary?

And what, one, two, three weeks from now, will go through Selene's mind if Petra loses?

Except Petra doesn't lose. It's a close showdown, the closest in years, but in the end the girl from One lies bleeding out into the mud while Petra, knee and hip and wrist smashed and blood pouring down her face, forces herself to her feet and staggers onto the waiting hovercraft.

It's District 2's first win in five years, and around him the room erupts into cheers as Alec sits in silence and his thoughts threaten to drown him.

If Selene had been the tribute, if she had won, then Alec could almost bear it. Lose his brother but keep his friend, even if she's not his friend anymore and never will be; if it couldn't be Creed then at least Selene is better than an outlier. But Petra — Alec has nothing against her, personally, other than the years of Selene's furious ranting about her face, her haughtiness, her everything, but if only one Two could have won these last few years, why not Creed?

Not a worthy thought, that, especially not about a girl who survived a final battle that Alec would most definitely not have, but he can't stop thinking it. On Reaping Day he'd been so relieved Selene was safe that he could barely breathe, but now that it's over — now that Two's Victor will be returning to a lifetime of glory — Alec would almost rather it be Selene on the victory stage.

That thought lasts until the final interview, when Petra hobbles onstage in an obvious mix of excruciating pain and a cocktail of the Capitol's best medication. Alec hasn't finished his medical training yet but he takes in the way they've padded her dress to cover the mess at her hip, the way her pupils dilate wide despite the blinding flashes of light onstage. There's no way she should be walking; they should have wheeled her out in a chair, except that's not the way for Two, is it.

Without heavy intervention, Petra will never walk again. When that thought hits, Alec remembers the time Selene sprained her foot and had to stay off it for two weeks, how even with crutches and a walking boot she'd all but gnawed her own leg off out of frustration. How the worst tests at the Centre hadn't been climbing the ropes until her palms bled or running laps until she collapsed but the ones where she had to sit still and be quiet.

If Selene came out of the Arena with an injury that meant she couldn't walk, Alec can't say she wouldn't swallow an entire bottle of painkillers to get it over with now. Knowing Selene and her need for freedom, Alec can't say he would blame her for that choice.

That night Alec kneels on the ground before getting into bed and offers up an apology to Petra for ever wishing her ill. It's not just Selene's life in the Arena she saved by volunteering, it's all the years of pain and rehabilitation and frustration ever after. "Thank you," he says in the darkness, and wonders if right now Selene has slipped out to the roof to stare at the stars.

* * *

Alec finishes up his training the next spring and gets his post, an apprenticeship in the mining town below Eagle Pass. The doctor there is looking to retire and wants someone to take over the practice, and it might not be exciting like Aunt Julia's work at the hospital or prestigious like a Centre doctor but it's steady and the people who live there are good people. Doc Harper introduces him around town and everyone claps him on the back and tells him welcome. Alec goes back home with two pies and an armful of potatoes and can't stop grinning for the rest of the night.

He settles into his job right before the 73rd Games, just in time to see Felix volunteer. He's every bit as wide-eyed and enthusiastic and sincere as Alec remembers, only this time the numbers are not on his side. Alec doesn't go see him at the Justice Building because he can't do it, he can't look his former classmate in the face and know that this time, for certain, he's going to die.

He does. Seventeen days in a pack of muttations descends from the trees and tears Felix apart. Alec misses the live broadcast but catches the highlight reel on the recap, and twenty minutes isn't seven hours but it's long enough. The room is silent as the cannon fires, and Alec swallows bile. He knew it would happen — Felix and Petra aren't a dynamic enough pair to allow for a double victory — but that doesn't make it easier.

The next day Alec busies himself with work, and while it doesn't make Felix any less dead, it's better than holing up in his room and stewing. That evening, as Alec sits with his last patient of the day, the woman lays her hand on his arm. "He was your age, wasn't he," she says. "Our boy this year."

Alec nods and focuses on getting her baby to swallow the eyedropper of medicine without spitting it up all over the place. "Yeah," he says. "I knew him, a couple years ago."

There's no way to tell her what that means, that he and Felix rarely spoke except that night when the now-dead boy sat with Alec so he wouldn't watch his brother die alone. He hasn't told anyone about Creed since coming here; they know his last name but Creed, like all Careers, dropped his long before the Reaping. There's nothing to tie them together except for the bracelet that once again lives in Alec's pillowcase, and he's glad for it.

"Snow bless our volunteers," she says in reverent solemnity. "May they sleep in peace."

"Snow bless," Alec echoes, and pokes the baby in the stomach to make her laugh.

* * *

He sees Selene once before then, at a bar in the ex-Career part of town. She's with a friend, a girl a little bit older, and they're laughing and leaning into each other's space in a way that suggests it's not just to hear each other over the music. It's the first time Alec has ever seen Selene interested in anyone — before Residential she made fun of boys and after they were never close enough for Alec to notice — and it startles him that it's a girl until he remembers this is _Selene_. She's hardly going to care about what people think, and sure enough the other girl says something to make her laugh and Selene tugs her in for a grin and a kiss.

Alec can't remember the last time he saw Selene laugh like that, pure enjoyment without the undertone of blood and knives, and strange as it is, it's nice to see. She's having fun like a teenager, sneaking kisses and whispering in the girl's ear and bursting into laughter at the look on her face, and when she waves her glass to call for a refill her wrist is bare just like Alec's.

Selene doesn't notice Alec, tucked into the corner at the end of the bar and trying not to stare. For a while Alec contemplates going over to talk to her, but what would he say — and more importantly, how would he know what not to say? Alec hasn't spoken to his parents since the day he left, and his letters to Aunt Julia carefully avoid any mention of Selene. He has no idea if Selene went back to her parents or if she knows about her brother, and any conversation they try to have would soon trip and fall over something better left unsaid.

In the end Alec says nothing, and eventually Selene throws her arm around the other girl's waist and drags her out. Alec finishes his drink, pays his tab and heads out, hands shoved into his pockets, and after a while he finds himself whistling. Selene is happy, and Alec is finally in a place where he wakes up every morning without dreading what he has to do that day.

He goes for a run on the way home to burn off the alcohol, and when Alec gets back there's a basket of apples at the front desk as thanks for helping a family of kids down with whooping cough at his last placement. Alec snags one, salutes the distant mountains where Creed is buried, and takes a large, satisfied bite.


	8. Chapter 8

TWO YEARS LATER

Scattered pops of gunfire have rattled the hills for the past few months like the Harvest Festival fireworks as the rebels break against the walls of the stronghold at Eagle Pass. They can't breach the fortress, not without something bigger than foot soldiers armed with assault rifles, but that doesn't mean they're not trying. After months of watching riots and executions and explosions in the other districts on TV, having the fight come within spitting distance of Alec's home is more than a little surreal, and definitely terrifying.

Before this, it almost didn't seem real. The rule change in the 74th had thrown Two into a frenzy; most of the people in town thought their kids would bring it home before the pair from Twelve took the crown, but once Cato and Clove died it was just another year. Two dead kids in the ground like all the others, nothing special here. The Victory Tour had passed with a few polite speeches here in Two, nothing of the rumours of fire and fury in the other districts. The double-sacrifice of the Victors in the Quarter Quell had been treated with reverence and respect; it could have been untrained children, or parents, or a ban on Volunteers, but this time their Victors were allowed to protect them for a second time. Even when the Arena fell and the mandatory broadcasts and propos kicked up to multiple times per week, after a while news of the uprisings faded to background noise.

Until the rebels brought their attacks to Two, and the Capitol followed.

The Capitol has sent garrisons of Peacekeepers down to fortify the passage, and sometimes they come swaggering into town. You can always tell the ones born and raised in the Capitol and sent to the branch Academies there; they're flashier with their weapons, freer with their speech, and more than a few women have stood in silence while a man in a white uniform winked and stepped in close to whisper offers that would be politely but firmly refused.

Two has its rotten officers sure enough, the Academy is brimming with those deemed too violent to stay in the Program without coming out sadistic beyond all saving, but they're sent away to the districts, not here. Capitol officers used to make Dad roll his eyes and sigh about the counter-productivity of using the corps as a repository for debtors and glory-hounds, and now they're here, swanning down from Command on their off days and demanding discounts from the shopkeepers with toothy smiles.

Outside the battle rages on, and scarcely a week goes by without the roar of another attack on Central Command. Alec and the others have learned to take it as part of daily life; the rebels don't march into town because they're not that stupid, not when villagers in the smallest mining town on the outskirts would take up weapons against them, but their very presence nearby shakes the foundation, just a little bit.

The war is no longer something that happens _out there_. Everyone walks with their shoulders a little higher, tempers a little more frayed, and Alec tries not to think about the part where the other districts were never given the luxury of being nervous from a safe distance.

(Because they're traitors, of course, his mind supplies, and traitors get what they deserve, but the justification sits like ashes in his throat whenever the broadcasts show children with blood streaming down their faces, or shell-shocked teenagers holding younger siblings in their arms. Traitors get what they deserve but what could possibly deserve this, explosions and dust and people screaming as they scrabble through the rubble to unearth the crushed bodies of their loved ones.)

(Alec dreams of Creed at night, eyes wide and unseeing, only instead of the Arena it's the broken-cobbled streets of Eight, and instead of an outlier's sloppy slash with a too-big sword it's firebombs or a blood-splattered Peacekeeper's rifle that takes him down.)

He dreams most on nights when the gunfire rolls down from the mountains, wakes up prickling with sweat and a vague sense of unease, like walking through a spiderweb and being unable to pick off all the strands.

( _Creed, eyes milked over and skin ashen from blood loss, sits on a crumbling balustrade and picks at his shirt, fused to his arm, as fabric and flesh peel away together: "This is our country," he says, voice faraway and hollow and right there in Alec's bones, "We can't let her fall like this."_ )

One night a pounding on his door tears Alec from an uneasy sleep. Alec doesn't bother reaching for his robe — enough miners suffer accidents in the middle of the night and end up on his doorstep that he sleeps in his clothes — and he's awake, the last of the dream fragments shoved away, by the time he's at the door. It'll be another cave-in, judging by the urgency of the fists against wood, one of the men with his leg crushed and mangled below the knee, but if they got him here fast enough then Alec should be able to save him.

It's a whole group of them there on the doorstep, supporting a man who's slumped between them, blood soaking his shirt and dripping down to pool on Alec's doormat. "Are you the doctor?" one of them asks, and — what? Who else would he be, one doctor per town and everyone knows that —

Alec's vision zeroes in on the grey uniforms with the icon of a bird, wings upswept, on one sleeve.

Alec's hand tightens around the edge of the door but his gaze keeps tracking the injury out of professional habit; that's a gunshot wound — no, two right in the torso, with one more graze on the arm — and not one to shrug and walk off. Without treatment this man will be dead. He basically is dead already, it would take a doctor with every ounce of conviction and stubbornness and a little dash of miracle to pull him out of it.

This man is a rebel, a traitor, this whole group standing on Alec's doorstep at one in the morning are traitors, but their guns are holstered and they haven't shoved their way in and placed a muzzle between his shoulder blades and demanded that he help their comrade. Alec swallows the sour taste in his mouth and steps aside. "Get him in," he says, brusque. "My office is just through that door. Put him on the table."

He works through the night and scarcely notices the time. One or two of the rebel soldiers stay with him, and Alec gives them orders in a clipped voice — fetch this, clean that, heat this, hold that — that get obeyed in seconds because apparently even traitors recognize authority when they hear it. His patient wakes once or twice from the pain, thrashing and yelling, but a jab of morphling and Alec's arm across his throat send him back again.

By the time the clock on the wall marks half an hour to the morning shift siren, the waxy pallor has faded and blood has returned to the man's cheeks. The wounds are clean and sewn, the bullets sitting in a cup on the counter, red fingers of blood swirling at the bottom. Alec staggers back, wipes his arm across his forehead, and only after he verifies the patient's condition does he let exhaustion hit.

A rebel soldier rushes to his side and catches his arm, leads him to a chair, and Alec bites off a hysterical bubble of laughter because this is what his life is now. "You can't move him," he says. One of them hands him a glass of water and he drains it in seconds, wishing for something stronger, but no way is he drinking with his house full of rebels. "You try to move him, he goes into shock and dies." Alec leans back, knocks his head against the wall. "The kindest thing you can do for him now is let me call the Peacekeepers and have him arrested. He'll be taken care of in prison."

"That's not an option," says one of them immediately, of course he does. Alec opens one eye and gives the man an unimpressed stare. "We didn't have you heal him just to turn him over to be tortured."

"Nobody would be tortured," Alec says, bristling, but the conviction that used to follow his words flits just out of reach, and he sags instead. "Look, it's up to you. I'm just telling you what's the most realistic option. If you try to take him back to wherever you're holed up, he will die."

"He'd rather die than be turned over to the Capitol," the soldier says firmly, and it shouldn't be funny but it is, all these people so willing to tear themselves apart — and for what? At least Creed was eighteen with his head stuffed full of propaganda; what's their excuse?

Alec shrugs. "Fine," he says. "Your blood is on his hands, not mine."

"You could take care of him until he's ready to go."

It's a woman, one of the ones who stayed out of the way while Alec did the worst of the surgery because she was too big and broad to do much but block him if she hadn't. Alec didn't pay her much attention then, focused on his job, but now he sits up and frowns. Something about her voice triggers Alec's memory, and he sweeps the room until he finds her, leaning against the wall in the corner and dwarfing the man next to her by a full head of height.

"You're kidding me," Alec says, and all right that might not be the most polite thing to say to the woman who won the Hunger Games the summer of Alec's first birthday but it's been a long night.

Lyme looks back at him, and she doesn't take offence, just fixes him with a quiet sort of stare that unsettles Alec down to his bones. "I know that's asking a lot," she says. Blood smears her face, streaked up into her hair where she's run her fingers through it. "But you're right, we can't move him, and we can't turn him in. It's too much of a risk."

"And asking me to harbour a traitor in my guest room while he heals up from an attack on my district, that's not a risk at all," Alec counters. Lyme doesn't flinch, not that he expected her to recoil from an exhausted twenty-year-old country doctor. "If I keep him here, that puts me at risk, and that puts the entire town at risk. These are good people here; I'm not going to put them in danger. I've saved his life and that's enough."

The others glance at each other, then one by one file out of the room, leaving Alec alone with the Victor and the man unconscious on the table. Alec studies Lyme with bald curiosity, too tired to be polite about it. She's not like Devon, five years after her; she stuck to mentoring and gigs in the Capitol, no grassroots movements here in Two, no orphanage visits or elementary school career days. Not a few people think she's standoffish, too good for her district, except that she's mentored nine times since her victory — ten if you count the Quell — and people don't put themselves through that for no reason.

"My brother died in the Arena, you know," Alec says, the words coming out before he even really registers them. "He believed in — everything. All the right things. Honour, glory, all that. You're a Victor, you must have believed all that and more. Why?"

Lyme doesn't ask why what. Instead she sighs, rubs a hand across her forehead and grimaces when bits of dried blood crumble off. "Why didn't you tell us to fuck off at the door?"

Alec frowns. "That's not fair, it's not the same. I'm a doctor, I can't just let someone die when I can stop it, no matter who they are."

Lyme spreads her hands.

Alec sits back against the wall, suddenly drained twice over. "Shit."

"Shit," Lyme says in agreement, and it's not funny at all, the country is falling to pieces and Alec has just become an accessory to treason, but maybe that's why he laughs. Lyme doesn't join in, but her mouth does twitch a little. She lets him run himself out, and when Alec swipes a hand across his eyes and tips his head back, she says, "We could really use an ally."

"An ally," Alec says, and now they're both just repeating each other. That should be funny, except it isn't, and he gets up to check the patient's heart rate just to give himself something to do. "You can't set up base here, I have patients to look after. They need to know they can trust their doctor."

"I'm not talking about a base. Just somewhere to go in case we get hit and can't make it back without a patch-up."

"No," Alec says again, more firmly this time. Amazing how much easier it gets, mouthing off to a Victor he would have been starry-eyed over if they'd met in another circumstance. "Definitely not. Every single time you all march through here, what do you think that will do to the town? Every time you come here you risk someone seeing you. Every time you come here you risk Capitol Peacekeepers rounding everyone up en masse to see how many other traitors are being hidden away in loyal people's homes."

He's not sure why he keeps saying _traitor_ to her face like that, except it feels good to twist the knife a little somehow. Dad would be proud, probably — except that thought takes what little satisfaction Alec got from the jab and turns it sour.

Lyme lets out a breath. "I'll bring them. Not the squad."

Alec pinches his nose, trying to press away the headache growing between his eyes. It doesn't take much imagination to picture Lyme struggling all the way from the battlefield with two injured soldiers on her back, all alone and without backup, and he hisses. "Look, right now you all need to get out. The shift siren is going to go soon, and that'll mean the overnight miners coming in from the trains and the morning crew going out and you'll get caught and I don't want that on me. I'll keep your guy until he's ready to move but you need to leave."

She nods and stands up, and the weirdest thing about all this is that Alec is only a few inches shorter than she is, maybe, even if she is twice his bulk. Some Seward genes breed true, if none of the ones that count. "If you say no then you say no," Lyme says. "We'll find another way."

Alec nods. Again, they could have pulled a weapon and tried to force him to help, and maybe it's because they're too good for that and maybe it's because everyone knows you can't threaten a person into saving your life, not forever, but either way it feels like something. "Don't get killed," he says as Lyme leaves. It's stupid, but the idea of another Victor dying over this stupid war feels like such a waste.

She does laugh this time, a small huff of air. "I'll try."

* * *

The soldier's name is Dale. He doesn't tell Alec where he's from, but his accent says the backwoods of Two and his bearing says ex-Career. They don't chat much, other than for Alec to ask questions about his condition, and Alec can't help wondering what happened to make him turn. Whether he finished out his twenty or broke contract, whether he joined for idealism or out of desperation or something else entirely.

Despite the lack of personal chatter, it's clear after a few days of Dale regaining full consciousness that he respects the hell out of Lyme. "She's not a traitor," he says to Alec once, stabbing his spoon into his bowl of stew with vigour. "I don't care what anybody says. She's a hero."

Alec didn't say anything either way, but doesn't bother pointing it out. Whatever her actions, it's not Alec's place to judge. Lyme fought for her district and her country, she killed ten teenagers in the Arena and mentored over half a dozen others, and that's just what made it onto the cameras. Whatever course of events piled up to make her turn her back on her people and join the rebels, to her it must be justified. Alec has no right to say otherwise on her behalf.

Dad would disagree, but if there's anything the last twenty years have demonstrated, it's that Alec is not his father.

"She takes care of us," Dale says. He shoots Alec a challenging glare, and Alec keeps his expression neutral with the ease of years of practice. "They send us in, all those cameras and everything, we have to make it look good, but she doesn't care about that. She knows how to do her job and how to keep the people who follow her safe. That's more than a lot of people can say."

Alec refills Dale's water glass and sets it down next to him, tapping the side in a pointed gesture. Dale takes it and downs half in one long, noisy gulp, and Alec amuses himself for a moment by wondering what it is about District 2 that makes them all so well-trained. "What about the district?" Alec asks. He shouldn't — don't engage, don't empathize, always dehumanize the enemy, they're not people unless you let them be — but he isn't going to go up to his Victor and demand she answer. "She's attacking her own — your own — people."

Dale shrugs, and he fishes in the bowl for a chunk of carrot. Alec had to roast them before cooking; they're getting the withered ends of the produce now that production is down throughout most of the country. A few more months of war and it won't be the bombs that kill people; it will be the snow and their empty bellies that do it for them. "Not civilians," he says. "She won't strafe and she won't hit anything that's not strictly military. If the war hits the streets in Two it won't be because of her."

Alec pushes back his chair and stands up, turning to stare at the eye chart on the far wall and focusing on the smallest row of letters. "You can't really believe that," Alec snaps. "You really think it will stop with Eagle Pass? You think, whatever good she does, that if your rebels decide it's time to take the district, that she'll be able to stop them? I've seen the footage. Districts on fire, kids dead in the streets. The only reason it hasn't happened here is that people aren't fighting back, but keep pushing and they will. Peacekeepers aren't the only people willing to defend the district."

"The rebels aren't the ones killing those kids," Dale says. Alec expected an outburst, but his voice stays calm. "The rebels aren't the ones bombing factories and hospitals. It's our people who are dragging families into the streets and shooting them in the heads on live TV. You don't know what we do — what I did, before I found another way."

(The trainers at the Academy pressing a baton into his hand, showing him the right way to grip to exert maximum force with minimal effort. _Control techniques_ , they called it, showing a video of a sneak thief in District Eight resisting arrest. _Pain compliance_ , they said, when the girl from Six with drug-reddened eyes and track-marked forearms shrieked and dropped to the ground.)

"War kills people," Alec says. Selene used to roll her eyes through the Games monologue every year but the words still roll through Alec's mind like thunder. _War, terrible war_. "Yours is no different."

"Then don't join," Dale says. His spoon clatters in the bowl as he shoves it away, dropping his feet to the floor in a heavy thump. Alec doesn't turn; his palms itch at his sides, and he almost wishes Dale would try to jump him just so he could have a fight and chase away the unease. Wouldn't his old Centre trainers be proud. "You stay here, country doctor, and stick your head in the tunnels until they cave in around you."

Alec curls his hands into fists. "I saved your life," he says, turning around and giving Dale his best ex-Career stare. The soldier doesn't flinch. "I haven't turned you or your outfit in. Don't push me."

"Don't expect a pat on the back for minimum decency," Dale says. "Look, kid, I was you once, and now I'm here. However different you think we are, we're not, except I've got courage and you don't. But I saw it, and one day maybe you will too."

The question sits in Alec's throat today as it has every day, but he won't ask, even if with Dale more talkative now than he's been all week. Asking Lyme and hearing her two-word answer had been bad enough. Whatever changed Dale's mind, turning a young Peacekeeper with his head stuffed full of Centre rhetoric to a rebellion that's never done Two any favours, odds are it's not something Alec needs rattling around in his head.

Dale turned against the Capitol without a dead brother and a changed childhood friend to sour him against his birthplace. Alec pushes the thought away, swallowing down the unpleasant, crawling sensation like the time a ladybug crawled into his juice glass without him noticing.

"Get some rest," Alec says instead, picking up the dishes and avoiding Dale's eyes, sparkling with medication and revolutionary passion. "You need to be mobile in three days."

He should have called the Peacekeepers that first night, and nothing is stopping him from leaving the room and picking up the phone now. Alec might even get Uncle Paul, depending on who the local dispatch sent him off to, but as he drops the dishes in the sink and stares at the phone, he can't actually make himself reach out and take it.

Instead Alec turns on the television to the twenty-four hour news cycle. It's a split-screen as always, showing statistics of prisoners captured and executed, terror cells routed out and targets saved from rebel attacks. There are clips of buildings aflame, people screaming and fleeing from explosions, mothers clutching children to their chests and grim-jawed teenagers with blood and soot smeared across their faces holding weapons too big for them.

 _War, terrible war_ , and in the corner President Snow's face stares at the camera and promises peace, peace if only the rebels lay down their arms and stop inciting violence.

Peace, the President says, and Alec watches as a Capitol hovercraft firebombs a warehouse reportedly filled with rebel agents. The running ticker across the bottom states that they ignored all requests for a non-violent surrender, but Alec sees no mediation agents with megaphones, and no weapons fire emerges from the building before it collapses under the assault.

Alec shuts off the screen, tasting bile and copper, and he spits blood into the sink and fetches an ice chip from the freezer to soothe his bitten tongue.

* * *

Lyme shows up at the end of the week, alone and dressed in borrowed civilian clothes that do nothing to disguise the power she exudes even when standing at Alec's back door waiting to be let in. The only thing that would save her from instant recognition is the exhaustion; Alec didn't notice last time when he'd been soaked to the elbows in a dying man's blood, but now he sweeps a critical gaze over her, noting the hollows in her cheeks and the dark circles under her eyes, the spots where the borrowed shirt sits loose over her shoulders not only because it's ill-fitting but because she's dropped weight.

"You need to eat more," Alec says automatically, ushering her inside and ignoring her glare. Doctor's immunity is good for something.

"You and Claudius should form a club," Lyme shoots at him as she pushes past. Alec stares after her for a minute before deciding just to let that one go. "How's he holding up?"

"Stable," Alec says, following her through to the back. She doesn't hesitate once to ask Alec which way to turn even after only coming inside once, and Victor recall is at once impressive and a little bit creepy. "He didn't spew any intel while on his meds, either, don't worry, and none of my regular patients noticed anyone else here. You should be fine."

Lyme stops just before the door, leaning her weight against the frame and not exactly blocking Alec but not inviting him through, either. "And you didn't tell anyone."

Alec taps his thumb against his leg, but stops a second later when Lyme's gaze flickers toward the movement. "I said I wouldn't. Don't make too much out of it."

She nods, acknowledging the point. "You said your brother died," Lyme says, her voice gentling without softening. How many years of image training did it take her to find the perfect balance? Alec crosses his arms. "Is that when you left?"

He narrows his eyes. "Who said I was in?"

"Do you want a list?" Lyme says, amused, and all right, fair enough, anyone with experience could probably read Centre in Alec's posture no matter how much he tries to erase it. "But nobody gets to be a doctor without a few years in the Program, not unless they're a backwater sawbones, and you're not."

"Good guess," Alec says. He could push past her, end the conversation — don't engage, don't humanize — but he stays, looking her over. She has her jacket pulled down over her wrist where the Victor tattoo sits, and when she catches Alec looking she moves her hands behind her back. "Does it matter?"

"Your brother was the boy in the 71st," Lyme says, and Alec hisses a breath and falls a step back. "You look alike, now that you mentioned it. I was off that year but I remember him. Tough year."

She doesn't apologize, which Alec had half expected even though she wasn't the one in the mentor seat that year, and he swallows a sudden stirring of anger. "Are you going to use my dead brother to try to turn me?" Alec snaps. "Like I said, he believed in everything, never questioned even once. I don't think turning traitor would be the best way to honour his memory."

Lyme keeps her gaze level and doesn't apologize for that, either. "He deserved better," she says simply. "They all do. Every kid, every district. It's not right."

"Twenty-three deaths every year is a fair price for keeping the country safe," Alec parrots before he even registers his own response. The words fill him with about as much certainty and comfort as they ever did, which means a chill passes over him even inside the house, but damned if he'll let her manipulate him. Not like this. Not with Creed.

Lyme's expression hardens just a hair, and there's the Victor underneath the exhausted rebel, all tight lines and danger thrumming underneath her skin. Her posture shifts, one foot sliding to the side to distribute her weight more evenly, and Alec edges back in response. Two fighters testing each other out, checking for openings. "I don't think you believe that," Lyme says. "I also think you know it's more than just the Games. It's fine for us, here, our two-a-year buy us safety and security and everything else we all grow up with, even in the quarries. But out there?" She doesn't gesture, nothing theatrical, but she doesn't need to. "Out there their kids die and they get nothing for it. Here Peacekeepers mean what the name says, but in the districts, what do you think they stand for? The promise of peace and protection is a lie, and I think you know that."

Alec, if he'd graduated from the Academy, would not have been sent out to the districts where dissent was heaviest and the iron rule tightest. Not with his aggression scores as low as they are; the whispers said only the people who failed out of the Program for liking the kill tests too much got posted out in the outskirts. It doesn't take a genius to imagine why.

"What do you want from me?" Alec asks finally. "I already told you, I won't let you make a base here, and I'm not giving you intel even if I knew any."

( _"This is Central Command," Dad said, ushering Creed and Alec in through the door and waving his hand. Alec gaped at all the computers and consoles, so many people bustling and big screens full of maps and information and little points of light. "This is where your Uncle Paul and I work. Uncle Paul is the head of personnel, that means he knows where everyone is and where they're going. He coordinates mission teams and handles appointments and transfers. I'm the chief of homeland defence. That means I keep the people in our district safe. Stay close and I'll give you a tour."_

 _"Can we see where the weapons are?" Creed asked, trying his best nonchalant face._

 _Dad laughed. "If you deserve it," he said, and Creed discreetly pumped his fist once Dad turned his back._ )

"No one will ask you for intel," Lyme says with a certainty that makes Alec raise his eyebrow. Anyone who promises that strongly without authorization is either naive, optimistic, lying, or a combination. Lyme catches his expression and amends, "I won't, and neither will anyone I bring with me. But we need somewhere safe to go if someone gets hurt worse than our field medic can handle. Somewhere we can trust."

Alec forces his tongue between his molars to stop his jaw from grinding. "What even is your plan? You can't take Eagle Pass with a handful of soldiers. You're just going to keep running against a wall and losing people one by one until you're all dead. It's the only stronghold that didn't fall under rebel assault the first time. That's not an accident."

Lyme spreads her hands. "I'd rather die running against the wall than be the wall," she says. Alec clicks his tongue but she only shrugs. "My orders are to take the Nut — that's what they call it, don't blame me — and that's what I'm going to do. If we can take the stronghold then we take the district without having to fight in the streets. If they have to go town by town then it's going to be bloody, and I don't want that." She stares Alec down, and he's glad for his upbringing if only because it gave him the practice not to fidget under her heavy gaze. "Two will fall," she says simply. "One way or another. I'm here to make sure we still have people left when it does."

"And when you take it?" Alec asks, even as his brain demands to know what the hell he thinks he's doing. This is a Victor — his Victor, the one who won the Games the closest to his birth, even if she's not the first he remembers — but the boiling inside him won't settle down out of nowhere. "There are thousands of people working there. Almost all of them are Peacekeepers past their twenty. They all have families. My —"

Alec snaps his mouth shut, biting off the words before he betrays anyone, but no. No, he won't help them. Lyme's math makes sense, in terms of pure numbers — take a military installation to avoid spreading out to civilian targets — but that doesn't make the war just. It doesn't make those deaths right. It also doesn't mean that the people working at Central Command are acceptable casualties. His father might never want to see him again but that doesn't mean Alec will aid the rebels trying to march in and put a bullet through his brain. Dad and Uncle Paul and Selene's Uncle Ramon and all the rest, all Peacekeepers who are doing their best with a country that other people set on fire.

"I'm a doctor," Alec says finally. He channels Dad and cools the flames, turning it to ice and steel and stone. "If someone comes to me and needs help, then I'll help them because it's my job, but that's all. Please don't ask me for anything else."

Lyme's cheeks pink for a moment, angry splashes across her skin that make Alec wonder what his face is doing, but it's too late now. "Agreed," she says. "Let me grab my soldier and I'll get out of your way."

Alec stays back while Lyme fetches Dale, and he leads them out through to the back and locks the door behind them.

He's far too addled to sleep, but when Alec turns on the television it's nothing but gunfire and actual fire and people dying in the streets. It's the president promising order with surrender and a growing count of casualties inflicted by the rebels, and Alec might not agree with Lyme and the rebels but it doesn't mean this is what he wants, either. Alec learned how to spin a story at the Centre and the broadcasts are nothing but propaganda and sensationalism and it's _bullshit_ , every second, and everything is fuzzy and underwater and he _can't take it_ anymore.

When Alec snaps back to himself there's a hole in his television screen and sparks coming out from the wiring and the paperweight on his table is missing. "Shit," Alec mutters, running a hand over his head. He never had blackouts in the Centre, not like some of the kids who rage-blanked and woke up with blood on their knuckles, but first time for everything.

He doesn't bother cleaning up the glass tonight. Alec drags over the chair from the kitchen table to stand over top the worst of it so he doesn't accidentally step on it in the dark, then grabs his shoes and hits the trails behind the house.

Alec's head is no more clear when he comes back home a few hours later, dripping with sweat and muscles protesting from the run, but at least he's too tired to stay up thinking about it. He collapses into bed, still damp, and doesn't wake up until morning.

* * *

"Thanks, Doc," says Burt Townsend, stretching out his arm and wriggling his fingers. "Was worried I'd have to take time off, and with Shelley and the baby we can't afford that right now."

"You would have if you'd come in a day later," Alec says, giving the man a stern look. "This is why you come to me instead of trying to tough it out. You go back and tell the rest of the boys, you hear?"

He's still working on his country doctor demeanour, after a childhood of speaking deferentially to anyone older regardless of social status, but the people in town don't need a kid who's shy and meek and polite. They also don't need the precise, measured language Alec was raised with — in a Peacekeeper it's official but in a doctor it's uppity, some big fancy city doc who don't know nothing about how real folks live — and he still stumbles over getting the proper mix of casual authority down.

Burt laughs and touches a hand to his forehead, so at least Alec managed it right this time. "Will do," he says. "Jim's got a bum knee he don't want us to know about, I'll start poking him before it gets too bad and he does something stupid."

Having gotten his cooperation, Alec doesn't push it. "Just tell him it'll save him money down the line," he says. "A quick visit here is worth the week he won't be off without pay when he can't put his weight on it."

Burt grunts and tugs his shirt back into place. "Ain't that the truth. I hear tell in the Capitol if you get sick you get money to stay home and have someone wipe your nose for you. Must be nice, eh?"

Alec doesn't look at him, focusing all his concentration on gathering up his things and putting them back in place. "Maybe we should all join the rebels," he says lightly, putting just enough bullshit into his voice that Burt will know it's a joke if he's not pushing for truth. "See if their benefits are any better."

The man barks out a laugh, harsh and amused and defiant all at once. "Oh yeah, that's a great plan. I bet that's real high on their list, hey? Blow up the refineries, blow up the dams, blow up the train tracks, and oh hey let's get sick leave out to the people who want them to go the hell home. Those rebels don't give a shit about us out here, and that's fine because I don't give a shit about them."

"Good thing we stick up for each other then," Alec says, holding out his hand.

Burt shakes it, gripping tight. "Damn straight. Listen, you got a free night this week, stop by for dinner. Shelley's been after me to ask you since you fixed my ankle last spring."

Alec smiles. "Will do," he says.

After Burt heads out Alec closes up for the night — the day miners always come in late after the shift so they don't waste any money having to come in during work hours — and heads out to the porch. Eagle Pass makes its same grey shadow against the sky as always, and at least tonight there's no rumbling of gunfire coming from its base.

Lyme showed up with another injured rebel a few days ago, and Alec patched the woman up and sent them off without a word. He'll keep doing it, bandaging their wounds and burying the bullets in biohazard boxes to keep anyone from snooping, but Alec can't help wondering how many times it will happen. How many loyal Peacekeepers Aunt Julia is treating at the central hospital at the same time.

District 2 might fall in spite of everything just like Lyme predicted, but Alec spent his childhood under the shadow of Eagle Pass and he knows the truth better than she does. They'll never take Command, not with a thousand soldiers, and whether Lyme is right and that means the fire spreads to the people or whether Two stays the bastion it did in the first war and lets the Capitol win, either way, this holding pattern will snap.

Gunfire in the hills and Peacekeepers in the streets and tense jokes among the miners, this can't last forever. The problem is no matter how hard Alec tries, he can't figure out the best way for it to end. There's blood and death at every turn, be it rebels or Capitol or those in the middle, and by the time Alec drags himself inside his toes have fallen asleep from the chill and he's no closer to an answer.

"I'm sure that's a metaphor for somethin'," Alec mutters in his best blue-collar drawl, and stamps his feet to get the feeling back before heading inside.

* * *

The explosion tears through Alec's dreams and drags him awake, pulling him to his feet with his heart leaping in his chest. The windowpanes rattle from the aftershock along with the distant hiss of rain — no, not rain, rocks, thousands of them, cascading down the side of the mountain in a flood. The rumbling builds, not sharp like artillery but low and rolling like thunder, and instead of fading it grows louder and louder as more of the mountainside comes down with it.

Alec shoves open the window and pushes his head through before flinging a hand in front of his eyes at the brightness. The flash in the sky fades fast enough, but the sky glows red over the mountain as gouts of flame burst from the rock. A plume of smoke grows higher and higher, blotting out the stars in the swath of black sky above the sea of scarlet.

As a child Alec learned to recognize the signs of a rockslide like everyone born and raised in Two, but this is different. Now comes the telltale rattle of gunfire, and smaller explosions ring the mountain as gaping holes appear in its side, visible even from this distance as dark patches of emptiness.

Two things could have happened: either the rebels breached the stronghold and those inside decided to blow it up rather than let it fall into enemy hands, or —

Less than a minute later Alec is up and dressed, his bag slung over his shoulder. He shoves his feet into his boots and snatches up the keys to the worn-out truck he inherited from Doc Harper. There are cries throughout town as the residents wake and see the destruction, and Alec's brain takes up a litany of cursing as he throws the truck into gear.

A woman runs into the street as Alec drives past, and he slams on the brakes to avoid careening into her. "You have to help them," she says, clinging to the the edge of the window. It's Mrs. Clark, her face streaked with tears. "My James, my boys — they're on the overnight shift down in the mines. If that mountain comes down they'll be trapped. Please, I don't know what's to be done, but if you see them —"

Alec hadn't even thought about the mines beneath the mountain; even after living here for the past two years his thoughts immediately went to the fortress and the Peacekeepers, not the good men and women working underneath. "I don't know what I can do," Alec tells her. His mouth has gone completely dry, his tongue sandpaper. "But whatever I can do, I will."

"Bless you," she sobs, and backs up to let him pass.

There's a blockade on the road when Alec reaches the square, grey-uniformed rebels armed with rifles and machine guns. "Stop!" one of them shouts, readying his weapon and pointing it at Alec when he exits the truck. "Nobody gets through. Just go back and nobody else will get hurt."

The guns in his face are bigger than any Alec ever dealt with in his early days in the Academy, and Dad kept his service pistol but nothing else in the house. It doesn't matter; there are people dying, crushed or suffocating or bleeding to death, miners and Peacekeepers and administration and yes, even rebels, and they're not going to keep him back with a few bullets.

"I'm a doctor," Alec snaps, holding out his bag. "Look through it, I'm unarmed. I'm here to help."

"No one is allowed —"

"Wait," calls a woman, jogging over from inside the square. "Wait, it's all right, he's one of ours. Lyme cleared him."

The man narrows his eyes. Machine gun fire splits the air, and now that Alec is closer the sound of wails and shouts filters up from the tunnels. He grits his teeth, but he can't help anyone if he charges now — or if he protests at being called one of theirs, those responsible for murdering who knows how many of his people. "Are you sure?" the man asks, stepping closer.

"He pulled a bullet out of Margot's shoulder last month! Yes, I'm sure," she says. "Let him go in. We left the tunnels open for a reason, he may as well do what he can. Just stay away from the fighting until it's over."

Alec nods and closes his bag, and one of the soldiers peels off to escort him. The sound of the battle is deafening, far worse than anything Alec faced in his training either at the Centre or the Academy, but his heart has steadied. He has a job to do and he knows how to do it; nothing else matters.

He follows his escort toward the tunnel exit, skirting the worst of the fighting until they arrive at the small, open square. It's ringed with rebels and lined with bodies, and exhausted miners huddle in clumps with their hands on their heads. Most of them are wounded, hastily bandaged with strips of cloth torn from their clothing.

"I'll take it from here," Alec snaps, and if the soldiers feels insulted at being ordered by a civilian then too damn bad. He kneels down beside one of the men who's gasping in an odd cadence, and sure enough when Alec presses a hand to his side he finds broken ribs. "It's all right," he says. "Lie down, you'll be all right."

It's chaos and blood and screaming, and the more miners stagger out of the tunnel the worse their condition. The longer it takes them to reach the surface the further back in the mines they were when the explosion hit, and they stagger out with the last of their strength, limbs smashed and blood soaking their clothing. They need far more than what Alec can do with his limited equipment and the few vials of morphling he rations out in micro doses, but anything is better than letting them slowly bleed to death on the concrete. The rebels sure aren't doing anything but point guns at the wounded.

Like always, Alec's world narrows to the injured and his work. Hours pass but he barely notices, occasionally stopping to work out a cramp in his hand or stretch his back. The less injured miners he presses into being his assistants, barking out instructions and ignoring the soldiers as long as they don't interfere. The gunfire continues long into the night, but at least the explosions have stopped and the last of the rockslides seem to have stopped. Now and then a shower of rocks shivers down to the ground, pattering in harsh staccato, but no more massive tremors or avalanches of stone. The inside might still collapse but the mountain isn't likely to come down on top of them.

Distant shouting makes it through the hail of weapons fire. Alec recognizes the cadence of a rallying speech with the echoes of someone mic'd for sound, but tunes it out; whoever's out there trying to sway the crowd one way or another, their politics are not his business and not important. Even President Snow himself couldn't order Alec away from his patients while there's still work to do.

The speech continues in the background, and Alec finally staggers to his feet, knees aching. One of the miners grabs his elbow to steady him, and Alec runs a hand over his face, wiping away sweat and blood and grime. "Is that everyone?" he asks. His voice scratches in his throat, thick with exhaustion and dust.

"I think so," the miner says. "You saved us —"

"Not everyone," Alec says sharply. He turns to the nearest soldier. "Well? I don't hear anymore gunfire, does that mean I can get some help? Or at least more supplies?"

And just because the universe hates him, one last rifle shot cracks through the air, followed by an uproar that sends three of the soldiers off in the direction of the square. Alec flings up his hands and stalks back toward the tunnel, only to run into one final group of miners stumbling out through the gap, hauling a pair of limp, broken bodies — one man, one woman — behind them.

"Dead?" Alec asks, and the man at the lead nods. Exhaustion presses down on his shoulders. "Put them over there, where —"

The words cut off as the group moves into the light. There's not much left of the bodies that's recognizable as human, half-crushed to pieces by what looks like a cave-in, but they're not in miner's garb. It's military, District 13 greys with the mockingjay symbol along the arm, and the woman — "Stop," Alec says finally, though forcing out the word almost costs him control over his nausea. He kneels down by her ruined head and reaches down, lifting one muscled arm to check her wrist.

The tattoo is gone, burned off by an inexpert hand, but the scar tissue still swirls in the telltale ring, dotted with what once was a collection of circles representing orange, red, silver and gold beads. "Oh shit," Alec says. He lets the arm down gently, reverently, and sits back on his heels. "Oh _shit_."

"Who is it?" asks the man. "They're not one of ours, not dressed right."

"It's Lyme," Alec says, and the men around him gasp. The last time they spoke he barely looked at her, his chest tight with fury at her attempts to turn him. She was a traitor, turning her back on her people and twisting her actions around in retrospect to make it sound like the good of the district, but — she'd been here, underground, helping the miners escape, until the mountain killed her.

Alec pushes himself to his feet and orders the nearest soldier over. "You just lost your commander," he snarls. "Better report that up to whoever's tallying up your casualties." He glances down at the body next to her, marks the intact ink around his wrist before moving on to the bloodied face. "Make that two," Alec adds dully. He can take a wild guess at what caused Lyme's Victor to join her in a fight against her own people in an attempt to save them, but either way he followed her to the end. "Now, did anyone bring help?"

"There's a group of doctors coming from town," the soldier says. "They were down at the square, they should be arriving —"

Alec waves him off, then turns around to stare across the rows of crumpled bodies at Aunt Julia.


	9. Chapter 9

The wind whistles over the ruins of the base at Eagle Pass as Alec stands on a heap of smashed concrete and overlooks what was once the proudest edifice of his district. Carrion birds perch on the rubble now, pecking at the blackened smears of blood that mar the rocks, and it's been weeks since the attack and they're still pulling bodies from the mess. Yesterday the field medics brought in a man, buried underneath half a mountain since the bombs fell but alive - alive and missing chunks of flesh as he'd used the only food available to him to stay alive. Most of the new finds weren't in one piece, let alone breathing, and while the numbers are starting to trickle out now, every day or so someone new gets shipped in.

Not just from the mines or the base but around the district, as the rebels make their sweep of the towns in an ever-widening radius. The district is lost, the soldiers who bring updates congratulate each other; it's only a matter of time before the people see it. In the meantime, any casualties are the fault of a district so barbaric and military that it arms their children.

They tried taking the Centre with only a handful of soldiers and rifles, Alec hears later, and he was up to his wrists in a wounded man's guts and couldn't laugh but inside something twisted in savage satisfaction. The people of the districts could have warned them about Career savagery, but the rebels of Thirteen have never seen the children of the Program up close. Out of all the soldiers that made it inside the barricade, none came out; since then they've barred the doors from the outside and are waiting for hunger to make the trainees compliant once the Centre's stores run out. Except that even as a child Alec would have rather subsisted on nothing but protein shakes for months rather than give in to surrender, and so he wishes them luck.

(They learn from their mistake in One, so say the rumours. The children of One's Career Program are deemed acceptable casualties of war, and the residential building stormed and bombed without anyone setting inside. They say the people helped; unlike in Two, District 1's Program didn't stop at children whose parents gave them willingly. Alec thinks of all those children, hard-eyed and beautiful and desperate to live, and turns away from the rebels' triumph.

When they try the same with the Peacekeeping Academy here in Two, they're shocked to find it derelict. Alec knows without being told that they would have emptied it weeks ago, sending every last soldier-in-training into the field. All around the district the trainees are fighting, fourteen-year-olds and other Reaping-age half-prepared kids armed with weapons and determination and a vicious, angry district pride. Not a few of the white-uniformed bodies Alec has seen in the hospital have been younger than he is.)

The sun glitters off the exposed veins in the rock, dazzling his eyes, but the flicker of beauty can't do much to undercut the absolute horror of the attack. The worst part is that, in another situation, Alec might have been a rebel in time. It's been burning inside him since he was a child - not his personal dissatisfaction, not even Alec is selfish enough to turn on his country because he doesn't feel fulfilled in life - but the Capitol took his brother and offered nothing back, and for what? What glory lay in all those deaths, again and again and again?

What glory lay in any of it, whether the Victor that year made their kills with speed and grace, or slow slow slow with a sliding grin and deft strokes of the knife, or with traps or by accident or in a haze of insanity and desperation, what did it _matter_? With every trainee who washed out of the Program - every boy who came back from a kill test in hysterics, every girl who stared at imaginary blood on her fingertips and smiled smiled smiled until her cracked lips split down the middle - the monster crept closer. This was wrong, the Games were wrong, and maybe given enough time, enough death, Alec would have seen enough.

Then again that's the point, according to the rebels, anyway. How much death would it take for the people of Two to get their heads out of their weapons chests and see the truth? When the only touch of the Capitol's brutality had been those twenty-three deaths per year, of course it made sense to stay. Two didn't have the lash of the whip to deal with, or the gnawing of starvation. The miners hungered and worked in the dark for long hours, but their children would always be safe from the Reaping and even Parcel Days came every few years.

Some people, the rebels say to each other, toasting themselves over a hastily-grabbed lunch between sorties, may have enough compassion to realize that their own comfort does not negate other people's suffering, but not here. Not in Two. Here they're selfish and arrogant and evil, and the plight of others far away would never touch them. The only way to talk to animals is to be an animal, they say, and so they brought the war to them.

Some of the outer mining towns, those furthest from the district centre who suffered most in the dead of winter when the frost ringed their mining tools, joined the rebels when the forces arrived rather than turn and fight. Whether it was true revolutionary fervour or a cold practicality that ran the numbers and decided to minimize losses Alec doesn't know, and doubtful anyone will unless the Capitol wins and there's a second reckoning.

That's the problem with Two, they tell Alec. He's young and practically one of the rebels now, helping their soldiers leading up to the attack and since, and it's a point of pride he thinks to see if they can get him to agree with them wholeheartedly. For Two it was academic; they could sit in their homes and consider both sides, whether the Capitol or the Rebellion would win, and wait to see which they should support to gain the most after it all ended. For everyone else, they tell him, there was never any choice.

They're right or they're wrong or maybe it's somewhere in between, but either way people are dead and Alec helped the people who killed them. He's worked every day since the bombing until he collapses from exhaustion but it's not enough. People are dead - so many people, his people - because Alec didn't do his civic duty and turn the rebels in the first day they came knocking.

The day after the attack - after grabbing a restless, unsatisfying nap underneath a pillar in the ruined Justice Building - Alec heard that the rebels bombed Two's Victors' Village at the same time. It marked the largest wholesale slaughter of Victors since the Quell itself, the most of any district, but when Alec blanched at the news the man who tells him straightened his spine. "The Capitol murdered the other Victors," he snapped at Alec, slashing his hand in a vicious gesture. "It's only fair. Yours were never going to surrender."

Probably not. Brutus died with the Arena, twenty-some years of honour and service relegated to a footnote in a single interview with an addled Peeta Mellark. No one knows what happened to Enobaria; the rebels didn't take her when they breached the Arena but she wasn't in the Village when they pulled out the bodies and counted them, either. Alec hopes she's dead, rather than in a Capitol holding cell or in hiding out somewhere; he can't imagine waking up one day and learning that everyone he cares about is gone.

As for Alec's people -

Aunt Julia hasn't spoken to him since that night in the square when she appeared with the other doctors, proud and unyielding. Like Alec she'd been recruited to save lives; like Alec she determined that her vows as a doctor meant she couldn't turn anyone away who needed healing, but unlike Alec the damage had already been done and the only choice for her was to stem the flow of death or let the bleeding continue. Aunt Julia would have turned Lyme and her soldiers in, Victor or no Victor, and they don't have to ask her opinion to see it.

They haven't spoken but they have worked together, because Aunt Julia is a trauma surgeon, one of the best in Two, and Alec is a family doctor whose emergency medicine is limited to mining accidents and common sense. The rebels treat him as one of their own because of Lyme and the soldiers whose lives he saved before the bombing, but Alec is barely into his first practice and he doesn't know how to command the other doctors. Aunt Julia takes over that first day without being asked, and she strides through the wounded, blood-spattered and smeared with dirt and filth, issuing orders and demanding supplies and terrifying ally and rebel alike with her furious energy.

Uncle Paul and the other staff who worked at Central Command but weren't there for the attack have been confined to their homes. They're there with their families as both leverage and collateral, after refusing to give up any of their access codes so the rebels can access the central mainframe. The rebels are confident they'll hack it without help and so they're not forcing anyone to talk, and Alec lets out a quiet breath of relief. The mainframe holds all the data on Peacekeepers all over Panem, and with access to that a lot of their people would be in even more danger. It will take time for the rebels to crack it, and in the meantime that means Uncle Paul and Kit are safe.

Alec assumed that means Dad and Mom are among those held under guard, at least until the day he learned that a Peacekeeper couple rallied the locals into a private militia and attempted to fight the rebels out of town. The militia fell in the end but they killed enough rebels on the way there to warrant an actual arrest and imprisonment, and the rebels speak of them with a mix of disgust and grudging admiration. "I hear they fought pretty good for people in their sixties," one of them said. "Not just him but his wife, too."

Alec didn't want to ask - doesn't need to, really, who else would it be - but he did anyway, and sure enough. The rebel who checked did a double-take and blink, and looked up at Alec with eyes narrowed in thought. "You're a Seward, aren't you?" she asked. "Any relation?"

Nobody from Thirteen knows the history of last names in Two; none of them will have learned the proud genealogies that mark the Sewards as a proud line of long lineage. They don't know that its meaning - eagle, or so Dad said once - ties right into the mountains they've always lived beneath. Alec could easily pretend it's common and no one would question.

His parents turned him out for nothing more than wanting to be true to himself. Alec gave the first sixteen years of his life to them; he owes them no more allegiance now.

"They're my parents," Alec said. "We haven't spoken in - a while. We had a difference of opinion." The rebel's expression softened, and Alec let her think it was over the rebellion despite the bitter taste of the unspoken lie because it might dredge up enough sympathy to save them. "I know no one can promise anything, but - before anyone makes any decisions, I'd like to talk with them."

"You're right that I can't promise," she said. "But I'll make a note."

No word on Selene. Alec doesn't know for sure that she joined the Peacekeepers but it would make sense - that was her plan, as a little girl, before the Arena got its claws in her - and he doesn't want to risk exposing her by asking the rebels and giving them her name. He checks the intake at the hospital every day and doesn't see her, but that doesn't make it better. She could be alive, and fighting, but she could also be laid out flat in a makeshift morgue anywhere from the Capitol all the way out to Eleven. There won't be any way to know until this all ends and someone tallies up the list of officers on duty and attempts to tally the dead and missing.

One thing is sure: Selene might have rolled her eyes at Alec and Creed and their obedience to duty, but she is not a rebel. She loves her district too, even if she'd rather lose a leg than admit it. The pretend rebels lost every game Selene, Creed and Alec played as children for a reason, and Selene has always defended what's hers.

Footsteps crunch on the gravel behind him, and Alec doesn't turn around to look. Every time someone approaches him without speaking he wonders if it will be Aunt Julia come to ask him questions, and every time it's a soldier or a doctor with a request and Aunt Julia continues to ignore his existence. It aches, all the more because he deserves it, and each time Alec wonders.

"Alec," Aunt Julia says, her voice cool and neutral, and comes to stand beside him.

Alec freezes but doesn't react. He nods, not sure what he's allowed to call her; she's never stopped being Aunt Julia in his head, but Alec can imagine her reaction if he tries familiarity now. Then again he can't picture calling her anything else; 'Julia' is too familiar, too presumptuous, and 'Doctor Valent' far too stilted.

The space between them yawns as wide as the bombed chasm below, but Alec won't be the first to throw words into it.

Silence stretches, long and taut, and finally Aunt Julia is the one to speak. In the end it's a single word that breaks the two years since he stood on her doorstep and hugged her for the last time: "Why?"

He's not surprised. Alec asks himself that question daily. He looks down at his hands, scrubbed clean of blood for now, skin pink and cracking at the knuckles from so much washing and disinfectant. He could ask her what she thinks she's asking him, how far down the rebels' road she assumes he's walked. He could defend himself, explain that he never gave them any information, never gave them the plans or the layout or anything else that would help them take his district.

He could say a lot of things, but Aunt Julia has never been one for excuses and Alec has never stomached making them. Actions have consequences, and Alec's has a body count that hasn't stopped adding up.

"I wanted to help," Alec says finally, helplessly. It makes him naive and foolish - what war doesn't have a body count, what did he expect - but he never wanted this, and maybe she will understand. Out of all of them, Aunt Julia always understood him, always loved him, unconditionally and without reservation. He's disappointed everyone else in his life but not her, never her. If anyone will, it will be Julia Valent or no one.

She doesn't answer. A hawk's cry pierces the sky as it circles the blasted remains of the line of pines below the base of the mountain, and Alec's pulse beats a desperate staccato in the pit of his stomach as he waits. Finally she nods once - the finality of the gesture hits him right between the shoulders - and walks away, leaving Alec alone.

"That's it, then," Alec says to the wind. It's melodramatic and ridiculous, and he almost laughs, brushing a hand across his eyes. In a way it's freeing, like the last, brutal chop of an amputation, and the severed limb might itch and ache in his mind and trick him into imagining a lingering connection but it's gone, and nothing will bring it back.

The good thing about hitting bottom means there's nowhere else to go but to start scrabbling upward. The war will end and the world will move on, with or without Alec; the only thing he can do is keep moving with it.

That afternoon Alec applies for a transfer out of the district; the trains are down going out to the outer districts, blown up by the rebels when they realized they couldn't hold them against the Capitol assault, and so the next morning Alec and his satchel of supplies and a few changes of clothes take the last remaining train to District 1.

* * *

After the war ends, Alec returns to District 2.

Transportation is still crippled all across the country and Two is not anyone's priority. Most of the food and supplies from the captured Capitol are skipping Two and being sent out to districts in need: districts without traitors, that means, and it won't hurt the pampered lapdogs to know what it feels like to go hungry for once. District 1 may have been the Capitol's favourite pet but they also bowed to the rebels right after District 8, and so the new regime forgets the ridiculous names and the gemstones and the tributes who tortured their victims four years out of five and focuses on the hidden factories and the angry workers and the girls taken from their homes and sold to greedy Capitolites for entertainment.

With District 1 one of the first to fall, the infrastructure suffered less than most. The rebels tended to commandeer rather than destroy when possible, keeping the factories and facilities open and stripping them of usable materials. It means that Alec's doctor's office, while lacking in essential tools and supplies, had wood panelling and plush carpeting before he tore it up to use as fuel. It's a strange, ridiculous blend of luxury and utilitarianism; every day Alec misses the solidity of home on the other side of the mountains, but he made his choice and here he is.

He watches the war end on television. The districts might be starving, the rebels might have no idea how they're going to feed and clothe the newly-freed people once winter rolls in and the burned fields and demolished factories don't magically restore themselves, but the revolution will be televised and the broadcasts keep running. Alec refuses to have the screens on while he's working, but he catches up late at night when he collapses into bed, nursing a glass of home-brewed liquor that doubles as a disinfectant when he's desperate. It's all rebel-owned coverage now, no spinning Panem seals and the president's sonorous voice-over, and Alec listens and watches the Capitol fall.

He sees the siege in a series of highlight reels, the capture of President Snow and the takeover of the presidential mansion as the new rebel headquarters. He sees the bombs fall on a crowd of children, hands outstretched toward the parachutes that bring their deaths; when the second round of detonations takes out the doctors that rushed in to help, Alec turns off the footage and rests his head in his hands.

He sees the trials, or part of them; once the Victors start testifying, once people who suffered have to sit and reveal their most ugly, private torments to an audience still starving for punishment even in the name of justice, Alec can't watch. He has no interest in staring at the Mockingjay stumbling through her testimony, a girl of seventeen who looks older and younger all at once, exhausted and pale and broken and nothing like the symbol who shouted in front of a backdrop of flames and rubble and galvanized the districts into bloodshed.

He sees that same girl put an arrow in the skull of their new president, marking the shortest political coup since the days of President Snow's predecessor. Alec watches the riot with a grim lack of surprise that fills him down to his feet; he imagines the people back home shaking their heads. The new leader as bad as the old, what a shock, and in the following days the news coverage scrambles to catch up but Alec doesn't bother.

And then come the Peacekeeper trials.

Commander Paylor of the rebellion offers a pardon to anyone who agrees to lay down arms and promise not to raise them again. It's a canny move, politically; the rebellion lacks soldiers, their numbers small to start and much-diminished by the fighting, and Two has people strong enough to fight and smart enough to survive. They don't release the numbers of those who accept her offer to the public, but one day there's a special broadcast as those who refused are marched into an open square and lined up in front of a firing squad.

None of them, Alec realizes with sick horror, are past their twenty, no one over thirty-five. He sits frozen, every bit as trapped as the night Creed died, as the charges are read. This batch are Snow's elite forces, the ones who did his dirty work, and the words hiss in Alec's ears like so much static because they're all within ten years of his age. The youngest one is Kevin, the boy from Alec's year who told him he had to fight if he wanted to stay in the Program, and now his stare is haughty and challenging as he stands with his hands cuffed behind him.

Most of the country doesn't bother paying attention to the execution of a few more loyalist soldiers, say the viewing figures at the bottom of the screen, but if nothing else there's one. Alec slides down to the floor in front of the television and presses his fingers to the television, touching each proud, unflinching face as the camera sweeps across them.

(Selene's not there, he tells himself, scanning the faces with a mess of panic and relief. Selene's not there.)

Alec touches his fist to his chest for the ones who can't, and he keeps his eyes open even as the tears burn until the rifle fire stops and the last body crumples to the ground. He doesn't watch to see what they do with the remains. He does grab his shoes and coat and head out to bully himself a space on the next freight train home, and the next morning Alec watches the mountains from the proper side as the train shoots around the now-familiar curve.

* * *

It takes a fair bit of badgering for Alec to get access to the list, and he exaggerates his connection to the rebellion during the war and plays up his relationship with Lyme as far as he dares with the full intention of feeling guilty about it later. The only Victor in Two left is Enobaria and that won't help him, but Lyme died a hero and represents the side of Two that Paylor has been trying to cultivate, so good enough. Besides, inventing relationships with the glorious dead in an attempt to get something out of it is practically a national pastime these days.

The officer in charge doesn't let Alec actually look at the names, but he does check it for him. "No Sewards took the pardon," he says, and while his face isn't exactly sympathetic when his gaze flicks to Alec, it isn't unkind, either. "It doesn't mean anything, necessarily. We don't have full records of everyone in the service, and it's not like we went around shaking people down to check. They might be in hiding."

They might also be dead; the casualty lists are still coming in. Alec folds his hands behind his back and squeezes until the bones in his fingers ache. "They wouldn't have hid," he says. It's been years, but the sun doesn't just stop rising in the morning. "They — raised a militia, during the war, I heard. I don't think they'd just disappear after that."

This time, the man stops halfway through picking up another file to give Alec an openly-awed stare. " _That's_ your parents?" he says his tone somewhere between shock and fury. "Old Man and Lady Hardass? I never paid attention to their names, we just always called them — well never mind. I don't need to look them up, I can tell you right now. They're being held for execution after refusing Paylor's offer to recant."

"Execution?" Alec stares. "How many people did they kill?"

"Enough," he says with a shrug. "Anyway, it's not about that. Everyone gets a trial, that's the way it goes, but they refused. Said they'd rather die than accept any kindness from traitors. Paylor is pretty good with her temper, but she lost it that day and said she'd oblige. They'll go down as war criminals by the time it's all over." He shakes his head and lets out a quiet, disbelieving laugh. "Sorry, I know that's not what you wanted to hear, but your parents are kind of infamous."

By now Alec can't even dredge up enough energy to be surprised. "During the war I was told I could speak with them," Alec says. Guilt gets a finger between his ribs and twists. He'd all but forgotten about them in the aftermath; without the broadcast to remind him, would he have even known ahead of time? "Maybe I can convince them to take the pardon. Can I try?"

"I wouldn't bet on it," the man says. "I mean, I can let you, the fewer people we execute in Two the easier it will make putting everything back together, but they're not exactly — well, I'm sure you know."

"I do," Alec says, and leaves it at that.

It takes a few hours of wrangling as the request makes it up the channels, but finally Alec sits stiffly on the plush leather couch in the lobby of the former District Central Hotel. The rebels have taken it, of course, making it the new district penal institution for political prisoners. Apparently even after raising up a resistance and attacking the rebels, the names Joseph and Adora Seward carry enough weight to keep them out of the ordinary lockup. Or maybe it's just that people intended to be figurehead deaths for the loyalist faction in Two merit a bit more pomp.

It would be almost funny, if Alec had any idea what to say. He's kept himself too busy over the past few years to replay that last argument in his mind, but Alec remembers every word. He meant it too, even the poisoned barbs he spat back in anger. Alec wouldn't take it back, exactly, but he does wonder what might have changed if he'd managed to be patient. Nothing of substance, most likely, but as the bodies pile up the new government is setting its foundation on thousands of what-ifs.

A rebel guard leads him up the stairs and down a long corridor, and Alec occupies his brain by wondering what the rebels are calling themselves now that they're the establishment. Maybe Alec's parents are the rebels now, a thought that is probably funny in some universe but not the one where Alec still can't find the words to convince them not to leap in front of a hail of bullets for the sake of honour. His family has always been good at ultimate sacrifice, with Alec being the sole exception. Maybe if he's lucky some of his personal selfishness will rub off.

There are half a dozen more guards stationed outside the door where they're keeping Dad and Mom, though Alec is pretty sure they would never try to escape just because it would be cowardly to run. His escort explains the situation, and finally the door opens and Alec finds himself standing in front of his parents for the first time in three years.

They both look the same — proud and professional and almost painfully handsome — though with a few more lines and smatterings of grey at the temples. "Alec!" Dad leaps to his feet, face gone slack, and Alec falls back a step. "Alec, what happened? Were you captured? Did they — are you —"

In a way it's almost touching. The last time they spoke, Alec had taken everything Dad thought he knew and thrown it in his face. They'd hurt each other in a way that only family could, and by the end Alec had been glad to do it. Years of silence and absence, time for Alec's parting wounds to dig deep and fester, and yet Dad's first thought at seeing Alec here in the rebel stronghold is that he's their prisoner too.

Alec never fails to disappoint. For a second Alec almost considers agreeing, except that for someone who managed to go through most of his life breathing lies, he's always been terrible at it. "No," Alec says. "I'm here to — I want to talk to you. I want —" As always everything tangles up inside, and Alec huffs in long-practiced irritation at himself. "You need to take the pardon."

To his surprise it's Mom who draws herself up. "Are you joking?" she snaps, and Alec whirls to stare at her.

"No?" Alec teeters off-balance, trying to find his mental footing. "Mom, they're going to kill you! Both of you! You have to recant."

The worry fades from Dad's face, slowly replaced by growing suspicion. "There's nothing to recant. Loyalty is loyalty. The only reason we're on trial for our crimes instead of the other way around is because the traitors won. That doesn't make them right."

"Does it matter?" Alec bursts out. "They've won, it's over! You dying won't change anything, it will just make you _dead_!"

Dad starts to speak, but Mom talks right over him. "Alec, they want us to apologize. Do you understand what that means? They want us to apologize for fighting, for our loyalty, for our lives. They want us to admit that we were wrong to pledge ourselves to the Capitol and the president and the people who kept this country running. They want to see us grovel and humiliate ourselves and beg for our lives, and I won't. We won't."

"It's just words —" Alec says, but he can't even finish the sentence. Words have power, always have. A leader with might but no words is nothing but a madman. A man without his word is nothing.

Dad shakes his head. "I won't pledge myself to them, either. You haven't seen it. If you'd continued your training and gone out through the districts, maybe you would have. Maybe then you'd realize. You don't know what it's like out there, away from the Capitol. What it's like when lawlessness goes unchecked. When people allow their children to starve while they trade poached game for alcohol. While the rich let the poor curl up and die on their doorsteps because it's easier to move a corpse than convince a living human to move day after day. Without discipline is chaos, and this new world will break apart even as they try to build it."

Alec bites down on his lip. Thousands upon thousands have died for this peace and there's no sign of the proud future that was promised. The country's infrastructure has been destroyed, its people demoralized, and from what he's seen Paylor is trying but there is nothing that ties them together now. Without the Capitol — without the Games to focus their attention, without a leader to pin their resentment on — the people will find another target. It's only a matter of time.

Then again, a wound doesn't heal overnight, either. That doesn't mean it never will.

"You know, don't you," Dad says, and Alec jumps. "This rebellion was a foolish endeavour that will lead the whole country to ruin. Whatever you did after turning your back on your family, you must still understand that."

Alec curls his hands into fists, then forces them open. "I'm a doctor," he says. "When someone comes to me with a broken bone, I don't try to argue against the accident that caused it. The bone is broken. It needs to mend. And — if Two is going to survive, it needs people like you to be in it." He swallows hard. "I need you."

"Alec." Dad runs a hand over his eyes and holds it there, fingers digging into the corners of the sockets. "I don't expect you to understand. You're young and you think everything should work out the way you want just because you want it to." The last of his grand manner fades, and he's just an aging soldier who's lost both sons in one way or another and has seen his country fall apart. "It's not all pride, you know. You think we're foolish, dying for a cause. Have you ever thought that this world is not one worth living for?"

"No," Alec says immediately. He hasn't forgotten, the years of disapproval and shaking heads, the hands on his shoulder that squeezed tight and chased the breath from his chest. Trying and trying coming up a failure every single time. "I do know what that feels like. I know you're scared. But you can't just decide to give up because the world isn't working the way you want it to anymore. Or are we only proud and brave when things are in our favour?"

Dad's eyes glint for a second, and for the first time in years Alec catches what might be a flash of respect. "You're not entirely wrong," he says, and Mom shoots him an incredulous look. "But this isn't my world anymore, or my fight. Building a new world out of the ashes, that's for young people like you. I'm going to die for the one that burned."

Alec tries a little while longer, but neither of them budge. They don't shout at him, or call him traitor, or ask which side he stood during the war, which is more than he expected. In a way it's almost worse; when he stormed out of the house that day he'd been convinced that what he'd done was right. The anger had soothed him, buoyed him up and let him not look back. Without the purifying fire of rage, everything else feels that much murkier.

In the end Dad asks him to leave, but it's not the full-blown hurt and fury of the time before, all stiff posture and twitching jaw. This time it's exhaustion and defeat and resignation, and disappointment hangs in the air but Alec can't find the source of the threads, can't decide whether it's at him or the world or his parents themselves.

"Don't do it," Alec says, pausing in the doorway. He can't ask them as their son anymore, not when both sides agreed to sever that connection. Using it as leverage now isn't fair to anyone. The problem is that without appealing to emotion, what else is there? They're adults and it's their choice, and people have died for less.

Dad shakes his head. "I'm sorry," he says — another first — and Alec slips through the door and lets the guards push it shut behind him.

* * *

Halfway home, Alec stops dead in the middle of the street and nearly gets run down by a construction van. He sidesteps back out of the way, scarcely hearing the angry honking as it hits him that he never actually checked on anyone but his parents since coming back. Uncle Paul and Aunt Julia were all right when Alec left, but so much has happened since then.

The Valents were every bit as loyal as the Sewards, even if they had fewer fancy words and speeches about it. Uncle Paul used to talk to Selene about the importance of authority and why they had rules, and for all her sympathetic looks and talks when Alec was a young boy struggling to find himself, Aunt Julia had disapproved just as strongly as Dad ever did after finding out Alec helped the rebels. Would they take the pardon? Or are they in another opulent makeshift cell, waiting for their chance to die so they can stick it to a country that no longer represents them?

And what about Selene?

By the time Alec makes it back to the district office, they're closing up for the evening but he manages to coerce his way in, likely by looking like a complete lunatic. "I need names," Alec says to the girl behind the desk. He grips the counter and tries not to vault over to look through the files with or without her. "Valent, Paul and Selene. Please, I need to know if they're alive."

She's wearing Peacekeeper white instead of rebel greys, but with Paylor's insignia sewn on over a reverse-faded patch on her left arm where the old symbol has been removed. She's not much older than Alec. "Captain Valent took the pardon," she says with crisp efficiency, and Alec sags with a relief so great he actually has to rest his head against the wooden countertop. "He was awarded his retirement pension and returned to live with his family. He has not returned to duty."

No, Alec thinks, closing his eyes and counting breaths in an attempt to slow his stuttering heartbeat. He wouldn't. Uncle Paul knows all the codes to the mainframe at Eagle Pass; he also worked with the thousands of men and women who died there. He won't help the rebels who murdered them.

"Selene Valent," the woman continues, her voice trailing off as she peruses. "Not on the list of pardons. Checking — ah." She makes a small noise of sympathy. "Scouts Division. Killed in action during the Capitol Siege."

Alec pushes himself away from the desk, the first wave of relief swamped by a sudden flood of grief. "Thank you," he says, managing to croak the words out.

The girl pauses. "Friend of yours?" she asks carefully.

"She was," Alec says. He presses his fingers to his eyes, echoing his father's gesture without thinking until his brain pieces together his action with the recent memory. "We'd — lost touch."

"I'm sorry," the girl says. She's here working behind a desk and wearing the symbol of the new regime, but for a moment the anger rises and she's pure Two, proud and straight-backed with her mouth pressed thin. "I'm the only one left in my graduating class. Took a hit to the head early and slept through most of the fighting, lucky me, but." She shrugs. "The mountains endure, right?"

Alec takes a step back and touches his fist to his chest. Words and apologies have no meaning here, not anymore, and the girl matches the gesture as they lock eyes with with quiet solemnity. They don't ask each other's names or offer any more details, and after that Alec nods and takes his leave.

From here he takes the long-familiar path, now half overgrown even if they've repaired most of the road, and several of the trees are scarred from gunfire or flash bombs. Alec doesn't bother to stop by his childhood house, abandoned for months and possibly even commandeered since his parents' arrest; instead he heads straight for the white house with the blue trim and the shed where Selene hit him with the rock.

It's all there, though there's evidence of the war here too. The ground has been trampled in a way that the grass is still recovering from; there was an evacuation, hundreds of soldiers and civilians marching and cutting into the ground with their boots. But the house is there, and the front walk, and the gate, even if Alec can tell by the fresh bolts that it was once torn from its hinges and later repaired.

The paperwork for Dad and Mom's pardon sits awkwardly shoved in Alec's back pocket, and he pushes open the gate and jogs up the walk to knock on the door.

It's Uncle Paul who answers this time instead of Aunt Julia, and it's probably cowardly but Alec is glad. If he had to face her now, he might never make it through and he has to. "I checked the lists," Alec says. It's a stupid place to start but he can't think of anywhere else, and Uncle Paul's eyes tighten at the corners but he says nothing. "I — Selene, I'm so sorry."

Uncle Paul closes his eyes for a moment, and Alec finally snaps to that maybe he didn't know, maybe he hadn't wanted to know, hadn't checked the lists so he could cling to the hope, however distant, that his daughter still lived. "So am I," Uncle Paul says finally, and no, there's grief darkening his eyes but it's old, not fresh and shocked. The wound hasn't healed but it's not still bleeding, either.

"I saw her once, before the war," Alec continues, because what else can he do but babble on like an idiot. "She looked good. I didn't talk to her, but — she was happy."

Uncle Paul nods, but he doesn't move or invite Alec inside. "Alec —"

Alec flinches. The last thing a grieving father needs is for his dead daughter's friend to show up unannounced and start blurting out memories. "Sorry, I — you signed the pardon, right?" Uncle Paul draws himself up, expression closing off, and Alec rushes on. "No, I'm not — it's just, I saw Dad and Mom and they won't. They're up for execution but they won't sign, they're going to die because they're stubborn and I tried but they won't listen. For all I know they're even more determined _because_ I asked them not to. So I just — if there's anything — why did you take it?"

Uncle Paul looks back over his shoulder, and oh. Alec nearly smacks himself in the face, because of course. Uncle Paul has a wife and a son who aren't bound by the promise and would have to live on without him if he let himself be executed in a fit of principle. He still has something left, whatever he's lost, and a reason to keep going. Alec's parents don't have that luxury; all they have is Alec, and after everything that's happened, he can't say that the ravaged remains of their relationship are much to cling to.

"Could you talk to them?" Alec asks. "You've known them a long time, do you think you could convince them? I don't know what to say but you might, and Dad won't listen to me but he might listen to you. You're his friend and he respects you, and if you could just get him then maybe he could get Mom. It's just, we might not be a family anymore but I can't let them die, please."

Uncle Paul looks at Alec for a long time, and finally his expression softens. "Of course I'll talk to him," he says. "If I'd known that's what was happening I would've knocked some sense into him weeks ago. I assumed they were off yelling at Paylor herself somewhere."

"Thank you," Alec says. He pulls the paperwork from his pocket and hands it out. "I — you don't have to tell them I asked you. Whatever you say that works."

Uncle Paul nods, but finally he pushes the door open so he's no longer bracketing the gap with his body. Just then Aunt Julia, likely curious about the conversation, turns the corner and stops dead at the sight of Alec. Alec freezes, and Uncle Paul's gaze flicks to his face but he doesn't move. "Julia," Uncle Paul says without turning, "Alec's here asking if I can't convince Joe and Dora to stop being stubborn fools. Why don't we have him in for dinner?"

Alec falls a step back, biting down on his tongue to keep from doing something absolutely humiliating like begging her to say yes. It's her house and her right to refuse him, the rebels killed Selene and Alec helped the rebels and that means he's tangled up in the whole mess and he has no right to ask her to change her mind —

But then Aunt Julia smiles a little, and it's a faint, tired ghost of the one that used to warm Alec on his worst days when they shared cocoa in the kitchen but it's real, and it's for him. Right then the sky could open up and pour down with rain and Alec would swear the sun shone anyway. "That sounds good," she says. "I'll set an extra place."

Alec wipes his eyes as Uncle Paul steps back to let him in, and Aunt Julia turns back to the other room. "Kit," she calls out. "Alec's here. Do you remember Alec?"

Kit peers around the corner. He's older and taller than when Alec left, a full-fledged child nearing Centre eligibility even with the trace of baby softness still around his cheeks, but his face lights up. "Alec!" he shouts, and runs and tackles Alec right at the knees. "You're back!"

Alec bends and picks him up, making a show of grunting at the weight as he heaves Kit up into his arms and balances him against his hip. "Yeah, I'm back," he says. Kit looks even more like Selene now than he did as a toddler, the same bright, intelligent eyes and probing stare, only no one will be teaching him how to hide a knife and look for the weak spot behind the knee. No one will hand him a gun and tell him to aim for the spot between the eyes. "You've gotten tall. You'll be taller than your mom soon."

(One time Uncle Paul grinned and rested his arm on the top of Aunt Julia's head, and she glared and smacked him so hard in the chest he yelped in shock before bursting into laughter. Afterward she'd hit him again, lightly this time, and pulled him down for a kiss while Selene had gagged and made a show of covering her eyes. Creed caught Alec's eye and raised his eyebrows. Their parents never did anything like that.)

Kit beams and loops his arms around Alec's neck, but then his expression turns serious. "Did you know I had a sister?" he asks, and Alec holds back a gasp. "Her name was Selene and she was a Peacekeeper. She died a hero."

Alec nods. "I know," he says, and the rock in his throat sticks hard when he swallows and behind him Uncle Paul and Aunt Julia have gone very quiet. "I had a brother."

"I know," Kit echoes solemnly, and he puts a hand on Alec's shoulder. "Dad said he died a hero too."

"He did." Alec blinks back the tears, but it's almost routine now, and he finds that he can still breathe. "I can tell you about them someday, if you want."

Kit smiles, but then he pushes back and squirms free, dropping to the floor. "I was making my models," he says, rocking back on his heels. "You want to help?"

Alec catches Aunt Julia's eye, and this time her smile loses the last of the hard edge and she nods. "Sure," Alec says. "I'd love to help you build something."

Kit grins, all of Selene's joy and none of her malice, though Alec bets he'd show it in a second if anyone pushed him or his parents the wrong way, and he drags Alec away by the hand.

"We're having supper soon, boys," Aunt Julia calls after them. "Don't get too caught up in building, remember, I don't want the food to get cold because you had to finish gluing."

"Yes Mom," Kit says obediently, rolling his eyes companionably at Alec, who winks. He glances at Aunt Julia one more time over his shoulder, but she matches Kit's fond exasperation and shoos them both off.

Outside the sun is dipping behind the trees, long grey shadows reaching out across the yard. Inside the lights cast a warm, orange glow and the house fills with Kit's excited chatter and the sounds of Aunt Julia and Uncle Paul finishing up with cooking; Alec thinks for once he won't mind the oncoming dark.

"Alec!" Kit says, hands on his hips. "Are you helping or what?"

"Sorry, sir," Alec says with a sharp apology salute. "I was just daydreaming." Kit nods, apparently satisfied. He hands Alec a tube of rubber cement and an airplane wing, and Alec kneels down and gets to work.


End file.
